At least 17 civilians have been confirmed killed by assailants who invaded a village in southern Chad near the border with the Central African Republic, the Gore prosecutor’s office said on Thursday.
The prosecutor said an investigation had been opened into the “mass killing” which took place when “unidentified armed individuals attacked the village of Don, located in the province of Logone-Oriental, bordering the Central African Republic, about 500 km south of N’Djamena, the capital of Chad”, said Nerambaye Ndoubamian, the prosecutor, revealed in the statement.
“The assailants, armed with firearms and bladed weapons, arrived on the scene on motorbikes and horses, and murdered more than a dozen villagers, set fire to huts, kidnapped oxen, and left several wounded.
“In total, 17 people died in the attack, including 11 formally identified in the village of Don, three others 3km from the village, and three wounded including an infant who succumbed to their injuries. Other injured people were treated in hospitals,” he added.
The head of the Don community who condemned the attack in a statement, said it was not only “cowardly, barbaric and despicable acts” but perpetrated “under the helpless and complicit gaze of the administrative and military authorities.”
The inhabitants of the village are mainly from the Kabba community, an ethnic group that has settled in Chad and the neighbouring Central African Republic, and whose members are mostly Christian and live from agriculture.
Deadly clashes between nomadic Muslim herders and the indigenous farmers are very frequent in the region, with the farmers often accusing the herders of ransacking their farms by grazing their animals, or even of settling on what they consider to be their land.