At least 11 villagers were killed by cattle rustlers on Wednesday in southern Chad, the scene of frequent deadly attacks and bloody clashes between herders and farmers, the army announced Thursday, saying it had killed seven attackers.
This new tragedy occurred on the same day that N’Djamena announced that his army had carried out an unprecedented operation in the Central African Republic, together with soldiers from this neighboring country, to hunt down, kill and capture Chadian cattle rustlers who had massacred 17 villagers. ten days before.
On Wednesday, “armed bandits… arrived to attack Mankade village in Laramanaye subprefecture to steal cattle and killed 11 villagers,” Defense Minister Daoud Yaya Ibrahim told AFP by phone. “The forces of order chased us, they killed seven bandits and eight were taken prisoner,” the general added.
The attack took place in the extreme south of Chad, some 60 km from the border with the Central African Republic.
Laramanaye deputy mayor Djimet Blama Souck told AFP that the bandits killed 12 villagers, including women and children.
On May 8, a similar attack in Logone Oriental province killed 17 people in a village and the army claimed the “bandits” were Chadians from the Central African Republic.
On Wednesday, Minister Yaya Ibrahim told AFP that the army pursued the attackers into Central African territory late last week and killed “a dozen bandits” in an unprecedented military operation involving Central African soldiers.
On Thursday, the general assured that the operation had finished the previous day, with a balance of “dozens of dead thieves”, and that all the Chadian soldiers had returned to Chad, with 30 prisoners and 130 stolen oxen.
It is impossible to independently verify the record of army operations in these areas. This was the first time these two neighboring Central African countries had clashed and accused each other of harboring and supporting rebel movements on their borders.
On Wednesday, Minister Yaya Ibrahim denied to AFP claims by various Central African media that the operation targeted Chadian rebel groups in the Central African Republic.
“A fortnight ago, two delegations of Chadian and Central African officials met at the border “to prepare a joint military action,” Fidèle Gouandjika, special minister and adviser to President Faustin Archange Touadéra, told AFP in Bangui on Thursday.
Touadéra and his Chadian counterpart, Mahamat Idriss Déby Itno, “jointly made this decision to eradicate the bandits on both sides of the border,” he added.
In addition to this bloody looting, deadly inter-communal clashes between nomadic Muslim herders and sedentary farmers, mostly Christians or animists, are all too common in this fertile area on the borders of Chad, Cameroon and the Central African Republic.
Source: TSF
