Darfur Violence Threatens Regional Peace

Fears are mounting that escalating violence in Sudan's volatile Darfur region is spreading.

A top Chadian army chief was killed in fierce fighting between government troops and rebels close to Darfur, officials said Monday.

Gen. Moussa Sougui, the army's deputy Commander in Chief, was killed during heavy fighting close to the Sudanese border in eastern Chad, a Defense Ministry statement said late Sunday.

In the statement, Defense Minister Gen. Bichara Issa Djadallah said the government had killed 100 rebel fighters and captured many more and were still pursuing other rebels. There was no way to immediately verify the claims.

He said four government soldiers, including the general, were killed during the fighting early Sunday near Hadjer Meram, a town 30 miles from the Sudanese border.

Chad has accused Sudan of bombing four towns along its eastern border.

Sudan denied the Chadian report, and there were no independent confirmation of the claims that Sudan's air force attacked the villages of Bahai, Tine, Kayarin and Bamina on Friday.

The United Nations announced Friday that it was sending a mission to both Chad and the Central African Republic to look for ways to keep the escalating conflict in Darfur from spilling into other countries.

Rebel groups are using various nations as rear bases to stage destabilizing attacks in both Chad and Sudan's western Darfur region, and "the humanitarian fallout is extremely serious," U.N. Undersecretary-General for Peacekeeping Jean-Marie Guehenno said in New York.

After an April Chadian rebel attack on N'Djamena, Chadian President Idriss Deby accused Sudan of supporting the Chadian rebels, which Sudan denied. He closed the border and severed diplomatic ties, but the two countries resumed relations and reopened the border in August.

Human rights groups have long warned that the violence in Darfur could destabilize the entire region. More than 200,000 people are believed to have been killed and 2.5 million people displaced in a three-year conflict between Darfurian rebels and the Sudanese government.

Chadian rebels, who include army deserters and some of Deby's relatives, have had sporadic clashes with Chad's army since October 2005. Deby, who first took power at the head of his own rebel army in 1990, won elections in May that the main opposition parties boycotted because they claimed they had been rigged.

The competition for power in Chad has become more intense since the country began exporting oil in 2004.