At least 100 people were killed in clashes between Arab and non-Arab tribes in south-eastern Chad last week, the government said on Tuesday.
The violence came just one week after fighting between rebels and the army in the same area, which borders the war-torn Sudanese region of Darfur, reportedly led to the deaths of about 100 guerrillas and more than 200 soldiers.
”There was a problem between the Arabs and the Kibets [a non-Arab tribe] one week ago [on October 31],” National Administration Minister Ahmat Mahamat Bachir said on Tuesday, without saying what had sparked the violence.
He said there had been an initial clash, which had left three dead in each community. But the situation rapidly degenerated.
”The Arabs in neighbouring districts then organised attacks on the Kibet villages,” Bachir explained by telephone from Am Timan, the main town in the Salamat region, where the clashes took place.
He said several villages had been burned in the fighting, which left ”more than 100 dead” and a number of wounded, and forced others to flee their homes.
The head of the Chadian human rights league (LTDH), Massalbaye Tenebaye, said the violence had left ”more than 140 people dead and 38 seriously wounded”.
A dozen villages north of Am Timan had been destroyed, with ”more than 400 huts burnt to the ground”.
Tenebaye said it was hard to obtain a final assessment of the human and material damage because sections of the tribes involved appeared to be hiding in the bush, fearing a new flare-up.
Bachir said calm had been restored to the region by November 4. He has been in leading a delegation in Salamat for the past three days ”to assess the damage and conduct enquiries”.
The region of Salamat borders the Central African Republic and is across the border from Darfur, where fighting pitting Arab militias backed by the Sudanese government against non-Arab black Africans has killed at least 200 000 people since early 2003.
In October, Salamat was the scene of clashes between the Chadian army and the country’s rebel Union for the Forces of Democracy and Development (UFDD), a newly formed coalition opposed to the regime of President Idriss Déby Itno.
The rebels briefly occupied Am Timan and the eastern town of Goz Beida on October 23. The incident led Ndjamena to accuse Sudan of supporting the rebels, an allegation both Khartoum and the UFDD have denied.
The Chadian authorities did not on Tuesday establish any link between the presence in the east of the UFDD rebels — one of whose leaders is Arab — and the clashes between Arabs and Kibets last week.
But the LTDH’s Tenebaye said he could not rule out a possible connection between the two. ”Regions and ethnic groups have always been exploited for political ends,” he said.
He said it is impossible for the moment to say which side started the violence. But the human rights league has regularly reported that attacks by rebels have led to reprisals against the assailants’ communities.
Communal violence, often sparked by long-standing rivalities or land disputes, has become increasingly common in Chad. ”In 2003 there had already been clashes between Arabs and Kibets over access to water and pasture,” Tenebaye pointed out.
”We are very worried that armed conflict between the different communities will spread,” he added. ”Since neither the administration nor the state is running the country, everyone is resorting to warfare.” — Sapa-AFP