Chad said yesterday its armed forces would enter Sudan “in the coming hours” to intercept what it said was a planned new rebel assault around its eastern border.
Sudan denied Chadian rebels were gathering inside its borders for an assault and urged its neighbour not to go through with its threatened raid. Some 400 Irish troops remain in Chad as part of a UN-mandated peacekeeping force. Tensions between the two oil-producing nations have escalated in recent days, with Chad on Sunday confirming its airforce had carried out cross-border raids on what it called Sudanese-backed rebels.
“This new situation will prompt us in the coming hours to pass across the border to deal with these pockets of mercenaries,” Chad’s interim defence minister Adoum Younousmi said in a statement. “We have asked our troops to deploy and those units which are due to intervene are in the process of gathering around these sites . . . The Chadian government will use its right of pursuit.”
Chad said the weekend raids had destroyed seven groups of fighters and its ground forces had captured 100 prisoners on the border before they pulled back.
Chad and Sudan have long traded accusations of backing each other’s rebels, which have waged simmering rebellions in the remote shared border region.
Sudan called last week’s bombing raids on its territory an “act of war” and issued another warning yesterday.
Chad and Sudan held reconciliation talks in Doha earlier this month and agreed to refrain from using force to resolve their conflicts. Last year, rebels reached both countries’ capitals before being beaten back. – (Reuters)