More than 100 people were killed in an outbreak of violence between Arabs and non-Arabs in southeast Chad last week, officials said today.
They said a quarrel between members of the non-Arab Kibede community and the Darsalim, an Arab group, in Chad's southeast Salamat region had degenerated into violence.
"The conflict between the Kibede and Darsalim communities a few days ago has caused 139 deaths between one side and the other and several injured have been admitted to hospital," a hospital official at the regional capital Am Timan said.
"Homes, granaries and others goods were burned," the official. A government commission had been sent from N'Djamena to arrange a reconciliation between the chiefs of the two communities, officials said.
Arab and non-Arab ethnic groups live on both sides of the border of eastern Chad and western Sudan.
Chad's southeast Salamat prefecture borders on Central African Republic and lies just south of the long, porous Sudan-Chad frontier, where attacks by Sudanese Arab militias have been reported in Sudan's Darfur region in recent weeks
