UN refugee agency concerned at worsening security on Sudanese-Chadian border

The security situation along Chad's eastern border with Sudan has deteriorated over the last few weeks, raising fresh concerns about the safety of more than 65,000 Sudanese refugees as Sudanese Arab militia have launched "bolder and more aggressive attacks," the United Nations refugee agency reported today.

Over a three-week period, the militia launched six raids on various refugee and Chadian communities close to the volatile frontier, stealing hundreds of head of cattle, some of them belonging to refugees, and killing a Chadian villager, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said.

Meanwhile, ongoing violence across the border in Sudan continues to drive Sudanese refugees into eastern Chad, the agency added. Chadian local authorities said that in one attack, Sudanese Arab militia torched six Sudanese villages just over the border from Borota. UNHCR staff in eastern Chad later witnessed thick smoke billowing from the burning homes, and interviewed 10 new refugee families who said they had fled the militia attack in which they had lost their homes.

The cross-border incursions come amid escalating violence in Sudan's Darfur region that has displaced nearly half a million people by some estimates. More than 65,000 others have fled over the border into eastern Chad.

Hobbled by the prevailing insecurity and lack of travel permits from the Sudanese government, aid agencies have recently been unable to deliver urgently-needed supplies to the strife-torn region, raising fears that more people may decide to go to Chad in search of relative safety and assistance.

For the past few years, the Darfur region in western Sudan has been the scene of a conflict pitting nomadic groups against sedentary agricultural people such as the Fur, Zaghawa and Masalit.

Early this year, the Sudan Liberation Army - the military wing of the autonomist Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM) - took up arms to protest against the perceived lack of government protection for the farming communities in Darfur. The government responded militarily. The conflict has heightened ethnic tensions between Sudanese of Arab origin and those of African origin in western Sudan.