Chadian civilians were killed and up to 8 000 driven from their homes when Sudanese Janjaweed militia attacked and destroyed two villages in eastern Chad on the weekend, Chad’s government said on Tuesday.
A government statement said Chadian forces killed 25 of the attackers after the raids on Saturday against the villages of Tiero and Morena in the Wadi-Fira region of the eastern border with Sudan.
”The attackers totally burned down these places and killed several of the civilian population. Between 6 000 and 8 000 people are out in the open, without shelter and deprived of everything,” said the statement, signed by Communication Minister Hourmadji Moussa Doumgor.
It added Chadian troops pushed back the raiders, whom it identified as Janjaweed militia allied with Sudan’s government.
The raids appeared to be the latest spill-over of violence from Sudan’s conflict-torn Darfur region, where well over 200 000 people have been killed since 2003 in a war between rebels and Sudanese government forces and their militia allies.
Chad President Idriss Itno Déby, who also faces an insurgency in the east, frequently accuses Sudan of sending the Janjaweed — feared mounted raiders whose name in Arabic means ”devils on horseback” — across the border to kill and plunder.
Sudan’s government routinely denies this but has refused to allow the deployment of a strong United Nations force in Darfur to bolster a badly over-stretched African Union peacekeeping contingent on the ground there.
”Chad wants peace on its borders but will assume its duty to protect its citizens by every appropriate means if Sudan does not do its part to end these armed militia attacks against the Chadian population of the border region,” the Chadian government said.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon recommended in January sending up to 11 000 peacekeeping soldiers and police to Chad and the Central African Republic to secure their porous borders with Darfur and protect civilians and refugees.
But Chad has said it only wants a civil protection force of police and gendarmes in the east, where hundreds of civilians have been killed since last year in cross-border raids from Sudan and ethnic fighting between Arabs and non-Arabs.
Scores dead
Meanwhile, the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) said on Tuesday that Chadian military authorities reported at least 65 people were killed in one of two villages in east Chad attacked by the Sudanese Janjaweed militia on the weekend.
”Chadian military authorities reported at least 65 dead just in the village of Tiero,” UNHCR spokesperson Ron Redmond told a news briefing in Geneva.
The death toll was expected to rise as casualty figures from Marena, the other village attacked on Saturday, were expected later in the day, he said.
”The testimony so far from the victims indicates that the attack was led by Janjaweed militia who were repelled by local self-defence militias and some national army soldiers,” Redmond said.
At least 2 000 people reached the Goz Amir refugee camp near Koukou, 45km west of the two villages, according to UNHCR.
Among those at least 70 were wounded in the attacks, about half of them seriously. Those were evacuated to Goz Beida hospital an hour away, it said.
”Survivors interviewed by UNHCR said their villages were surrounded by men on horseback and camelback, as well as many motor vehicles, some of which were equipped with heavy weaponry. The assailants began to fire at random in the villages and then began pursuing the fleeing population,” he said.
The militias then fled towards the Sudanese border.
Goz Amir camp is already home to more than 19 000 Sudanese refugees who fled violence in the neighbouring Darfur region.
”The majority of the civilian population arriving at Goz Amir is comprised of women and children. They say that many people are still hiding in the bush, fearful that their assailants might still be in the area,” Redmond said. — Reuters