Chad has begun the emergency relocation of refugees from its border with Sudan as the army prepares to deploy to the area in response to cross-border attacks, an official from the country's refugee agency said on Monday.
Chad's President Mahamat Idriss Deby last week ordered the army to prepare to retaliate after a cross-border drone attack from Sudan killed 17 people in Chad, including mourners attending a funeral service.
He vowed to retaliate against any further attacks.
The border town of Tine was struck on Wednesday afternoon as mourners gathered at a house for a funeral ceremony, a local resident said. There were two explosions and casualties included mourners and children who had been playing nearby, said the resident, who declined to be identified for security reasons.
Local government sources said it was not immediately clear who was behind the attack.
Sudan conflict worsening with mass killings and famine, HRW warns
Need for relocation
A separate government statement last week said Chad had strengthened its security presence at the border and could potentially carry out operations on Sudanese territory.
Initial refugee relocation operations will involve around 2,300 people, more than half of them women and children, said Saleh Tebir Souleymane, the representative in the border town of Tine for Chad's National Commission for the Reception and Reintegration of Refugees and Returnees.
They began moving people further into Chad, away from the frontier on Saturday, in the province of Ennedi Est, and were set to expand on Monday to all border towns that have been used as transit sites for refugees, Souleymane said.
"We have received instructions from the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs to act quickly because the border will be secured in the coming days by the army, which is already deploying there," Souleymane said.
Chad closed its eastern border with Sudan last month, after clashes linked to the war killed five Chadian soldiers.
But refugees continue to arrive "due to the intense fighting on the Sudanese side", he said.
Spiralling conflict
The conflict in Sudan between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which began in April 2023, has periodically spilled into Chadian territory, causing casualties and property damage.
Across the country, the war has killed tens of thousands of people and left some 11 million displaced, creating the world's largest hunger and displacement crises.
A series of strikes blamed on the Sudanese army in the southern town of Lagawa killed at least 15 people on Monday, a medical source said, while rival paramilitary forces mounted an offensive near the Ethiopian border.
Chad closes border with Sudan after clashes kill five soldiers
Sudan's southern Kordofan region is currently the fiercest battlefield in the three-year war between the army and the paramilitary RSF, who hold West Kordofan state where Lagawa lies.
"Fifteen bodies and 23 wounded people arrived in the hospital from three neighbourhoods," a medical source in the city told French news agency AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The World Health Organization (WHO) also reported on Saturday that a strike on a hospital in East Darfur, Sudan, killed at least 64 people, including children, medical staff and patients, as director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a post on social media.
WHO said the Friday attack on Al Deain Teaching Hospital has rendered the facility non-functional, cutting off essential medical services in the city.
More than 500 civilians were killed in drone strikes in Sudan between January and mid-March, with the vast majority killed in the strategic Kordofan region, the United Nations said on Tuesday.
"A sharp increase in the use of drones to conduct air strikes this year in Sudan underlines the devastating impact of high-tech and relatively cheap weapons in populated areas," Marta Hurtado, spokeswoman for the UN rights office, told reporters in Geneva.
She added that "according to information received, over 500 civilians were killed in such strikes from 1 January to 15 March".
(with newswires)
