Ethnic attacks in eastern Chad kill up to 220 – UN
Nov 9, 2006 (N’DJAMENA) — Gunmen on horseback have killed up to 220 villagers in eastern Chad in the past week in growing ethnic violence near Sudan’s blood-soaked Darfur region, the United Nations refugee agency UNHCR said on Thursday.
The raiders have struck at least seven villages since Nov. 4, UNHCR said in a statement, adding “…initial reports indicate that as many as 220 people have been killed in this week’s string of attacks, with dozens wounded”.
Humanitarian workers in Chad said the attacks were carried out by gun-toting Arab tribesmen against African villagers often armed with nothing more than bows, arrows and swords.
“Around 200 men on horseback attacked, accompanied by two Toyota pick-ups,” a humanitarian worker in touch with colleagues in the area told Reuters about one of the attacks, which took place around Dar Sila in Chad’s eastern province of Ouaddai.
“The attackers shouted ‘You slaves! We have arrived and now we are attacking you’,” added the humanitarian worker, who asked not to be named. Arab tribes of the Sahara enslaved black Africans for centuries.
Chad’s Territorial Administration Minister Ahmat Mahamat Bachir was visiting the Dar Sila area, around 40 km (25 miles) south of the eastern Chadian town of Goz-Beida, on Thursday to investigate the clashes.
“I don’t have a precise number of dead. … I know it’s more than 100,” he told Reuters by phone.
The attacks followed clashes last week between Arabs and non-Arabs in Salamat province, south of Ouaddai, in which over 100 people were killed, triggering calls for U.N. peacekeepers to deploy in Chad and neighbouring Central African Republic.
Aid workers in Chad said the attackers burnt the village of Djorlo to the ground. The raiders were drawn from three local Arab ethnic groups and targeted villages of the non-Arab Dadjo and Moro tribes, they said.
The pattern of violence reflects that of Darfur, where government-backed mounted Arab militia known as Janjaweed have attacked villagers and burnt homes in a war with rebels that has killed tens of thousands of people since 2003.
CALLS FOR U.N. FORCE
Violence has sporadically spilled over onto the Chadian side of the border, and has surged in recent weeks as the end of annual rains has allowed armed groups on horseback and pick-up trucks to cross river beds and marshes.
Last week, rebel forces captured a town in the northeastern Central African Republic, leading that country’s government to demand the deployment of international peacekeepers — a plea Chad has already made. Central African officials said the raiders came from Sudan, though Khartoum denied this.
Aid agencies say a strong international peace force is needed to improve security in the remote border areas, but Sudan’s Arab-led government has refused to have African peacekeepers in Darfur brought under a robust U.N. mandate.
“We are deeply alarmed at the brutality in eastern Chad, which is already struggling to cope with more than 218,000 Sudanese refugees from neighbouring Darfur,” UNHCR chief Antonio Guterres said in Thursday’s statement.
“We have warned for months that the Darfur conflict threatens to destabilise the entire region and we support calls for an international presence in eastern Chad and stronger Chadian efforts to maintain security in the area,” he said. (Additional reporting by Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva)
(Reuters)