The 103 children caught up in an abduction scandal in Chad wait at an orphanage, unable to return home despite most having been identified as the probe continues into the French charity accused of trying to spirit them to Europe.
They spend their time playing games and they cry far less than they did when they first arrived late last month, officials said.
The youngest among the children is 14 months, the oldest nine. Many are under five.
"Sixty-five children have been identified and their identity verified," said Honore About, head of the team identifying the children and looking for their parents.
But even they cannot return home yet since it is up to the authorities in the capital N'Djamena, where the child abduction investigation has been unfolding, to determine when they can be released.
Six French workers from the Zoe's Ark charity, which attempted to fly the children out of Chad to France, remain in jail in Chad in connection with the case.
Zoe's Ark says the children were orphans from neighboring Sudan's war-torn Darfur region who it planned to place in foster care with families in Europe.
But Chad says the group did not have permission to take the children out of the country, and aid agencies who have since cared for them said most of the youngsters are Chadian and have at least one living parent.
Identifying all the children is expected to take time, and Chadian officials are working with limited resources.
Some of the children don't know their full names, About said.
Much depends on observation, and officials rely on children's reactions when identifying parents.
"When someone says they are a father or mother of a child ... we bring them to the orphanage, we put them in a corner, and we bring in the children," the prosecutor said. "If a child goes to the person, that means a lot."
One of the children, Abakar Mahamat Adam, who said he didn't know his age, was puzzled by the circumstances that brought him to the orphanage.
"White people brought us here," he said.
"They said that they were going to bring us to school," Adam said.
His father has come to Abeche, but the boy wants to return to his Chadian village near the border with Sudan.
"Here, things are good," he said. "There, it's better."
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
China would train thousands of foreign law enforcement officers to see the world order “develop in a more fair, reasonable and efficient direction,” its minister for public security has said. “We will [also] send police consultants to countries in need to conduct training to help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities,” Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪) told an annual global security forum. Wang made the announcement in the eastern city of Lianyungang on Monday in front of law enforcement representatives from 122 countries, regions and international organizations such as Interpol. The forum is part of ongoing