A top Chadian army chief has been killed in fierce fighting between government troops and rebels close to Sudan’s volatile Darfur region, officials said.
General Moussa Sougui, the army’s deputy commander in chief, was killed during heavy fighting close to the Sudanese border in eastern Chad, a Defence Ministry statement said late on Sunday.
In the statement, Defence Minister General Bichara Issa Djadallah said the government had killed 100 rebel fighters and captured many more and were still pursuing other rebels. There was no way to immediately verify the claims.
He said four government soldiers including the general were killed during the fighting early on Sunday near Hadjer Meram, a town 50km from the Sudanese border.
Fears are mounting that the escalating violence in Sudan’s Darfur region is spreading. Chad has accused Sudan of bombing four towns along its eastern border.
Sudan denied the Chadian report, and there were no independent confirmation of the claims that Sudan’s air force attacked the villages of Bahai, Tine, Kayarin and Bamina on Friday.
The United Nations announced on Friday that it was sending a mission to both Chad and the Central African Republic to look for ways to keep the escalating conflict in Darfur from spilling into other countries.
Rebel groups are using various nations as rear bases to stage destabilising attacks in both Chad and Sudan’s western Darfur region, and ”the humanitarian fallout is extremely serious,” UN undersecretary general for peacekeeping Jean-Marie Guehenno said in New York.
After an April Chadian rebel attack on Ndjamena, Chadian President Idriss Déby accused Sudan of supporting the Chadian rebels, which Sudan denied. He closed the border and severed diplomatic ties, but the two countries resumed relations and reopened the border in August.
Human rights groups have long warned that the violence in Darfur could destabilise the entire region. More than 200 000 people are believed to have been killed and 2,5-million people displaced in a three-year conflict between Darfurian rebels and the Sudanese government.
Chadian rebels, who include army deserters and some of Déby’s relatives, have had sporadic clashes with Chad’s army since October 2005. Déby, who first took power at the head of his own rebel army in 1990, won elections in May that the main opposition parties boycotted because they claimed they had been rigged.
The competition for power in Chad has become more intense since the country began exporting oil in 2004. – Sapa-AP