Sudanese-backed rebels closed in on a key town in the east of Chad on Tuesday, said a Chadian minister, as the government denounced its neighbor for breaking a freshly signed peace deal.
The rebels swept deep into Chadian territory in hundreds of vehicles in a lightning offensive that began on Monday, government spokesman Mahamat Hissene said.
Hissene, Chad’s communications minister, said the rebels had penetrated around 100km inside Chadian territory and were closing in on the town of Goz Beida.
“They are on board several hundred vehicles. We’ve been tracking their movements since [they left] Sudan,” he said. “However, for the moment there has been no contact with government forces.”
Inhabitants of Goz Beida reached by telephone said all was quiet.
“The town is calm,” said one young local, who asked not to be named. “It is the aid agencies who let us know that the rebels had been spotted around Goz Beida.”
“There is no fighting here,” said Ahmat, a driver. “There are no problems.”
Earlier on Tuesday, international sources had reported exchanges of fire between the Chadian air force and rebel columns heading for the town, but neither side has confirmed this.
“Our men are on a line between Goz Beida and Abeche,” two key towns in eastern Chad, a rebel spokeswoman said.
The arid central African country and neighboring Sudan have for years traded accusations that each side backs rebels in the other.
Earlier, Hissene accused Sudan itself of sending “several armed columns” into Chad, also in violation of the peace agreement.
Khartoum has denied any involvement, but the Sudanese media center, close to the intelligence services in Sudan, reported bloody clashes on Monday at the border between Chadian troops and rebels.
France said on Tuesday it was worried about the security of civilians.
“We are following with great concern the situation in the east of Chad,” foreign ministry spokesman Eric Chevallier told a press conference in which he called on both countries to implement the peace deal brokered on Sunday.
The rebel assault is a blow to long-running diplomatic efforts to secure a thaw in relations between Khartoum and Ndjamena.
Brokered by Qatar and Libya, Sunday’s deal was regarded as essential to any lasting settlement to the six-year-old uprising in the western Sudanese province of Darfur that has spilled over into Chad and the Central African Republic.
‘UNUSUAL EVENT’: The Australian defense minister said that the Chinese navy task group was entitled to be where it was, but Australia would be watching it closely The Australian and New Zealand militaries were monitoring three Chinese warships moving unusually far south along Australia’s east coast on an unknown mission, officials said yesterday. The Australian government a week ago said that the warships had traveled through Southeast Asia and the Coral Sea, and were approaching northeast Australia. Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles yesterday said that the Chinese ships — the Hengyang naval frigate, the Zunyi cruiser and the Weishanhu replenishment vessel — were “off the east coast of Australia.” Defense officials did not respond to a request for comment on a Financial Times report that the task group from
Chinese authorities said they began live-fire exercises in the Gulf of Tonkin on Monday, only days after Vietnam announced a new line marking what it considers its territory in the body of water between the nations. The Chinese Maritime Safety Administration said the exercises would be focused on the Beibu Gulf area, closer to the Chinese side of the Gulf of Tonkin, and would run until tomorrow evening. It gave no further details, but the drills follow an announcement last week by Vietnam establishing a baseline used to calculate the width of its territorial waters in the Gulf of Tonkin. State-run Vietnam News
Four decades after they were forced apart, US-raised Adamary Garcia and her birth mother on Saturday fell into each other’s arms at the airport in Santiago, Chile. Without speaking, they embraced tearfully: A rare reunification for one the thousands of Chileans taken from their mothers as babies and given up for adoption abroad. “The worst is over,” Edita Bizama, 64, said as she beheld her daughter for the first time since her birth 41 years ago. Garcia had flown to Santiago with four other women born in Chile and adopted in the US. Reports have estimated there were 20,000 such cases from 1950 to
DEFENSE UPHEAVAL: Trump was also to remove the first woman to lead a military service, as well as the judge advocates general for the army, navy and air force US President Donald Trump on Friday fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General C.Q. Brown, and pushed out five other admirals and generals in an unprecedented shake-up of US military leadership. Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social that he would nominate former lieutenant general Dan “Razin” Caine to succeed Brown, breaking with tradition by pulling someone out of retirement for the first time to become the top military officer. The president would also replace the head of the US Navy, a position held by Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to lead a military service,
RSS