Chad accused Sudan’s army of attacking a town on its eastern border on Tuesday and blamed its neighbour for Chadian rebel raids that have disrupted international aid operations to help thousands of refugees.
The Chadian accusation showed tensions flaring again between the two oil-producing neighbours, who often accuse each other of supporting cross-border rebel attacks over their frontier running along Sudan’s violence-torn Darfur region.
Citing deteriorating security, United Nations refugee agency UNHCR has suspended its activities in eastern Chad, where a European Union military force (Eufor) is deployed to protect nearly half-a-million civilians displaced by conflict.
A statement from Chad’s government said Sudanese army ground troops supported by helicopters attacked the Chadian military garrison at Ade on their border on Tuesday.
”By openly intervening with its army and aircraft in Chadian territory, Khartoum is taking off the mask from its aggression against our country,” the Chadian government said.
In the past, Sudan has routinely rejected such accusations. Last month, Sudan said Chad was behind a Darfuri rebel attack that reached the outskirts of Khartoum. Chad denied that.
There was no immediate independent confirmation of the action at Ade, a frontier post in Chad’s eastern Ouaddai region where Chadian rebels have attacked several towns in the last few days in a series of fast-moving hit-and-run raids.
The rebels fighting to topple Chadian President Idriss Déby Itno said they had captured another eastern town, Am-Zoer, 70km north-west of Abeche. Abeche is the main hub of international aid operations in eastern Chad.
Chad described the rebels as Sudanese-backed ”mercenaries”.
”The Chadian army’s reaction will be on a level with the impudence of the Sudanese regime,” Chad’s government said.
Spokespersons for the Chadian rebel National Alliance have said their ultimate objective is the capital, Ndjamena, 700km to the west.
Call for dialogue
Chad’s latest accusation against Sudan followed a speech by President Déby late on Monday in which he denounced what he said was an ”international plot” seeking to plunge his country back into civil war.
Both the UN Security Council and the African Union have condemned the attacks by the Chadian rebels. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon called for dialogue to resolve the conflict.
Furious at the apparent ease of the rebel advance, Déby late on Monday sharply criticised Eufor, accusing it of ”closing its eyes” to killings of civilians and refugees by the insurgents.
Déby, who survived a rebel assault on Ndjamena in February, questioned the usefulness of the Eufor contingent, which has a mandate to protect nearly half-a-million Sudanese refugees and displaced Chadian civilians sheltering at camps in the east.
A Eufor military spokesperson at the force’s headquarters in Paris, Lieutenant Colonel Philippe de Cussac, declined to respond directly to Déby’s criticism but defended the contingent’s role in protecting civilians and humanitarian workers in east Chad.
In February, former colonial ruler France strongly backed Déby when he resisted the rebel assault on Ndjamena. Déby has ruled Chad, a minor oil producer, since seizing power in a 1990 revolt. — Reuters