A Chadian military reconnaissance plane was shot down in the volatile east by rebels using a surface-to-air missile, officials said.
The plane was downed on Tuesday close to the Sudanese border, government spokesman Hourmadji Moussa Doumgor said at a news conference. He gave no other details.
Doumgor repeated Chad's accusations that Sudan backed the rebels, charges Sudan has denied.
PHOTO: AP
"Today we are in state of war with forces from Sudan," he said.
The eastern border region with Sudan is used by insurgents to launch attacks on government forces.
"The state of emergency will be reinforced and the military put on the highest alert," Doumgor told journalists, calling on the UN and African Union to evacuate Sudanese refugees who are in camps near the border.
Doumgor, meanwhile, claimed some refugees were working for the Sudanese government to destabilize Chad.
The Chadian plane was shot down at dawn, deputy rebel leader Ibn Oumar Achiekh said in a statement. Rebels said a helicopter was also shot down. He also claimed that 150 government soldiers were killed, hundreds injured and 90 captured during fighting on Saturday close to the eastern town of Abeche, which the rebels briefly held. Some 21 rebels were killed, Achiekh said.
On Oct. 23, a ground-to-air missile was fired at a French reconnaissance jet that was part of a military mission in support of the Chadian government. It missed and it remains unclear who fired it.
Rebels bent on toppling President Idriss Deby have clashed sporadically with the government since last year. The competition for power has become more intense since Chad began exporting oil in 2004.
The rebels have been able to exploit volatility in neighboring Sudan, establishing rear bases in Sudan's troubled Darfur region.
Besides the rebellion, Chad's government has in recent weeks reported violence pitting ethnic Arab Chadians against ethnic African Chadians, mirroring the clashes in Darfur. Chad accused Sudan of instigating the conflict.
On Tuesday, Ibrahima Fall, a special representative of UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, described the Central African Republic as "a tragedy in the making."
PHISHING: The con might appear convincing, as the scam e-mails can coincide with genuine messages from Apple saying you have run out of storage For a while you have been getting messages from Apple saying “your iCloud storage is full.” They say you have exceeded your storage plan, so documents are no longer being backed up, and photos you take are not being uploaded. You have been resisting Apple’s efforts to get you to pay a minimum of ￡0.99 (US$1.33) a month for more storage, but it seems that you cannot keep putting off the inevitable: You have received an e-mail which says your iCloud account has been blocked, and your photos and videos would be deleted very soon. To keep them you need
For two decades, researchers observed members of the Ngogo chimpanzee group of Kibale National Park in Uganda spend their days eating fruits and leaves, resting, traveling and grooming in their tropical rainforest abode, but this stable community then fractured and descended into years of deadly violence. The researchers are now describing the first clearly documented example of a group of wild chimpanzees splitting into two separate factions, with one launching a series of coordinated attacks against the other. Adult males and infants were targeted, with 28 deaths. “Biting, pounding the victim with their hands, dragging them, kicking them — mostly adult males,
The Israeli military has demolished entire villages as part of its invasion of south Lebanon, rigging homes with explosives and razing them to the ground in massive remote detonations. The Guardian reviewed three videos posted by the Israeli military and on social media, which showed Israel carrying out mass detonations in the villages of Taybeh, Naqoura and Deir Seryan along the Israel-Lebanon border. Lebanese media has reported more mass detonations in other border villages, but satellite imagery was not readily available to verify these claims. The demolitions came after Israeli Minister of Defense Israel Katz called for the destruction of
SUPERFAN: The Japanese PM played keyboard in a Deep Purple tribute band in middle school and then switched to drums at university, she told the British rock band Legendary British rock band Deep Purple yesterday made Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s day with a brief visit to their high-profile superfan as they returned to the nation they first toured more than half a century ago. Takaichi’s reputation as an amateur drummer, and a fan of hard rock and heavy metal has been well documented, and she has referred to Deep Purple as one of her favorite bands along with the likes of Black Sabbath and Iron Maiden. “You are my god,” a giddy Takaichi said in English to Deep Purple drummer Ian Paice, presenting him with a set of made-in-Japan
RSS