Gunmen on horseback have killed up to 220 villagers in eastern Chad in the past week in growing ethnic violence near Sudan's blood-soaked Darfur region, the United Nations refugee agency UNHCR said today.
The raiders have struck at least seven villages since November 4th, UNHCR said in a statement, adding "...initial reports indicate that as many as 220 people have been killed in this week's string of attacks, with dozens wounded".
Humanitarian workers in Chad said the attacks were carried out by gun-toting Arab tribesmen against African villagers often armed with nothing more than bows, arrows and swords.
Humanitarian Aid worker
"Around 200 men on horseback attacked, accompanied by two Toyota pick-ups," a humanitarian worker in touch with colleagues in the area told Reuters about one of the attacks, which took place around Dar Sila in Chad's eastern province of Ouaddai.
"The attackers shouted 'You slaves! We have arrived and now we are attacking you'," added the humanitarian worker, who asked not to be named. Arab tribes of the Sahara enslaved black Africans for centuries.
Chad's Territorial Administration Minister Ahmat Mahamat Bachir was visiting the Dar Sila area, around 40 km (25 miles) south of the eastern Chadian town of Goz-Beida, on Thursday to investigate the clashes. "I don't have a precise number of dead. ... I know it's more than 100," he said.
The attacks followed clashes last week between Arabs and non-Arabs in Salamat province, south of Ouaddai, in which over 100 people were killed, triggering calls for UN peacekeepers to deploy in Chad and neighbouring Central African Republic.
Aid workers in Chad said the attackers burnt the village of Djorlo to the ground. The raiders were drawn from three local Arab ethnic groups and targeted villages of the non-Arab Dadjo and Moro tribes, they said.
The pattern of violence reflects that of Darfur, where government-backed mounted Arab militia known as Janjaweed have attacked villagers and burnt homes in a war with rebels that has killed tens of thousands of people since 2003.