At least 11 villagers were killed by cattle thieves on Wednesday in southern Chad, where deadly raids and bloody clashes between herdsmen and farmers are common, the army said on Thursday, which it says killed seven attackers.
This new tragedy came on the same day that N’Djamena announced that ten days ago his army, together with soldiers from that neighboring country, had carried out an unprecedented operation in the Central African Republic to pursue, kill and capture Chadian ranchers , who massacred 17 villagers.
On Wednesday, “armed bandits (…) ox thieves attacked the village of Mankade in Laramanaye subprefecture. They killed 11 villagers before taking oxen,” assured AFP by phone. Defense Minister Daoud Yaya Ibrahim. “The security forces pursued them, killing seven bandits and capturing eight,” the general added.
The attack occurred in the far south of Chad, about sixty kilometers from the border with the Central African Republic.
Laramanaye sub-prefect Djimet Blama Souck assured AFP that the “bandits” killed 12 villagers, including women and children.
On May 8, a similar raid in Logone Oriental province killed 17 people in a village and the army assured that the “bandits” were Chadians from the Central African Republic.
Minister Yaya Ibrahim told AFP on Wednesday that late last week the army had been pursuing attackers in Central African territory and killed “a dozen bandits” in an unprecedented military operation involving soldiers from that country.
On Thursday, the general assured that the operation had ended the day before with the number of “dozens of thieves killed” and that all Chadian soldiers had returned to Chad with 30 prisoners and 130 oxen stolen.
The Army’s reports of its operations in these regions cannot be verified by an independent source.
It was a first between these two normally cold neighbors of Central Africa, who regularly accuse each other of harboring and supporting movements of their respective insurgencies on their borders.
On Wednesday, Minister Yaya Ibrahim told AFP that several Central African media outlets denied claims that the operation was targeting Chadian rebel groups in the Central African Republic.
“Two weeks ago, two delegations of Chadian and Central African armed forces met” at the border “to plan a joint military action,” Fidèle Gouandjika, ministerial special adviser to President Faustin Archange Touadera, confirmed to AFP in Bangui on Thursday.
The latter and his Chadian counterpart, Mahamat Idriss Déby Itno, “made this decision together to root out the bandits on both sides of the border,” he added.
In addition to this bloody looting, very deadly inter-communal clashes between nomadic Muslim pastoralists and predominantly Christian or animist sedentary farmers occur very frequently in this fertile area on the border between Chad, Cameroon and the Central African Republic.