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Africa
Janjawid 'raid Chad villages'
Sudanese fighters accused of killing 65 and leaving thousands homeless.
Last Modified: 03 Apr 2007 12:03 GMT
The UN calls for the deployment of peacekeeping forces to Chad and Sudan to protect refugees 

At least 65 Chadians were killed and up to 8,000 driven from their homes when Sudanese Janjawid fighters attacked and destroyed two villages in east Chad over the weekend, Chad's military has said.
 
A UNHCR spokesman said on Tuesday: "Chadian military authorities reported at least 65 dead just in the village of Tiero."
The toll was expected to rise further as casualty figures from Marena, the other village attacked on Saturday, were expected later in the day, Ron Redmond told a news briefing in Geneva.
 
A Chad government statement said that Chadian forces killed 25 of the attackers after the raids.

"The attackers totally burnt 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 Hourmadji Moussa Doumgor, Chad's communication minister.

 

The raids appeared to be the latest spillover of violence from Sudan's Darfur region, where more than 200,000 people have been killed since 2003 in a war between rebels and Sudanese government forces and their allied fighters.

 

But the Sudanese government denied any responsibility for the raid.

 

"I have not heard anything about this incident. The Sudanese government played no role in this whatsoever," Ali al-Sadig, a Sudanese foreign ministry spokesman, told reporters in Khartoum.

 

Idriss Deby, Chad's president, who also faces internal fighting in the east, frequently accuses Sudan of sending the Janjawid - mounted raiders whose name in Arabic means "devils on horseback" - across the border on raids.

   

Sudan's government routinely denies this but has refused to allow the deployment of a strong United Nations force in Darfur to bolster an over-stretched African Union peacekeeping contingent on the ground there.

   

The Chadian government said: "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."

   

Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general, recommended in January sending up to 11,000 peacekeeping soldiers and police to Chad and the Central African Republic to secure their borders with Darfur and protect civilians and refugees.

   

But Chad has said it wants only a civil protection police force 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.

Source:
Agencies
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