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."
MONEY GRAB: People were rushing to collect bills scattered on the ground after the plane transporting money crashed, which an official said hindered rescue efforts A cargo plane carrying money on Friday crashed near Bolivia’s capital, damaging about a dozen vehicles on highway, scattering bills on the ground and leaving at least 15 people dead and others injured, an official said. Bolivian Minister of Defense Marcelo Salinas said the Hercules C-130 plane was transporting newly printed Bolivian currency when it “landed and veered off the runway” at an airport in El Alto, a city adjacent to La Paz, before ending up in a nearby field. Firefighters managed to put out the flames that engulfed the aircraft. Fire chief Pavel Tovar said at least 15 people died, but
LIKE FATHER, LIKE DAUGHTER: By showing Ju-ae’s ability to handle a weapon, the photos ‘suggest she is indeed receiving training as a successor,’ an academic said North Korea on Saturday released a rare image of leader Kim Jong-un’s teenage daughter firing a rifle at a shooting range, adding to speculation that she is being groomed as his successor. Kim’s daughter, Ju-ae, has long been seen as the next in line to rule the secretive, nuclear-armed state, and took part in a string of recent high-profile outings, including last week’s military parade marking the closing stages of North Korea’s key party congress. Pyongyang’s official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) released a photo of Ju-ae shooting a rifle at an outdoor shooting range, peering through a rifle scope
South Korea would soon no longer be one of the few countries where Google Maps does not work properly, after its security-conscious government reversed a two-decade stance to approve the export of high-precision map data to overseas servers. The approval was made “on the condition that strict security requirements are met,” the South Korean Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport said. Those conditions include blurring military and other sensitive security-related facilities, as well as restricting longitude and latitude coordinates for South Korean territory on products such as Google Maps and Google Earth, it said. The decision is expected to hurt Naver and Kakao
India and Canada yesterday reached a string of agreements, including on critical mineral cooperation and a “landmark” uranium supply deal for nuclear power, the countries’ leaders said in New Delhi. The pacts, which also covered technology and promoting the use of renewable energy, were announced after Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney hailed a fresh start in the relationship between their nations. “Our ties have seen a new energy, mutual trust and positivity,” Modi said. Carney’s visit is a key step forward in ties that effectively collapsed in 2023 after Ottawa accused New Delhi
RSS