Chadian government forces were forced to launch both air and ground assaults in defense to the appalling offense by the Rebels from the Union of Resistance Forces (URF). This is the major confrontation between the rebels and government forces since May.

When an aid vehicle is stolen in the eastern Chad town of Abéché, some people cheer and say the aid organization got what it deserved, according to the French think-tank Emergency Rehabilitation Development (URD), which is preparing a report on the impact of international aid groups on Abéché residents.

The discovery of oil in Chad was supposed to allieviate poverty and human suffering, but it's only enriched Western Oil companies and the local dictators.

Without adequate security or resources for education, young women and men in refugee camps would turn to prostitution or violence, the United Nations Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator for Chad said at a Headquarters press conference.Michele Falavigna, reporting on the humanitarian situation in Chad after his first three months, said the country had been at war for 40 years and had virtually "never known peace and development".

Lake Chad, once one of the world’s largest water bodies, could disappear in 20 years due to climate change and population pressures, resulting in a humanitarian disaster in central Africa, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has warned. The lake – surrounded by Cameroon, Chad, Niger and Nigeria – has shrunk by 90 per cent, going from 25,000 square kilometers in 1963 to less than 1,500 square kilometers in 2001.

Human rights activists in Chad say they fear a new Chinese-backed oil project will displace hundreds of people and will destroy at least 10 villages. Work has begun to build a 300km (185 mile) pipeline from the Koudalwa oilfields in the south of the country, to a new refinery north of the capital. But activists say an environmental impact assessment was inadequate and residents were not properly consulted.

Aid workers in eastern Chad are preparing to move some 28,000 Sudanese men, women and children from a refugee camp infiltrated by supposed rebels. The Chad government decided in mid-September to relocate Ouré Cassoni camp, which is near the northern town of Bahai and 7km from the border with Sudan.

Sudanese women who escaped the Darfur conflict to eastern Chad are facing high levels of sexual violence, an Amnesty International report says. Despite the presence of a UN force, women and girls are being attacked when they leave 12 designated camps in search of water, the report says. It also documents cases of refugees being attacked inside the camps by Chadian aid workers.

the latest briefing from the International Crisis Group, examines the exploitation of oil revenues. Since 2003 they have contributed greatly to the deterioration of governance in Chad and to a succession of rebellions and political crises. The regime uses the revenues as a means to reward its cronies, co-opt members of the political class, and acquire the military means enabling it to reject genuine political negotiations. This has further limited space for the political opposition and civil society and helped keep the country in a state of political paralysis, stoking the antagonism between regime and opponents.

The United Nations has called for an additional $200 million to provide aid to more than half a million people uprooted by violence in Chad and the neighbouring Central African Republic (CAR) and Darfur region of western Sudan, as demand mounts for humanitarian assistance. “People in eastern and southern Chad still require considerable help from the international community as they attempt to cope with the effects of displacement and in some cases to rebuild their lives,” said Eliane Duthoit, head of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Chad.

The UN refugee agency has begun a pilot programme to resettle 1,800 refugees in Chad to the United States, with a first group of 11 from several countries flying out of N'Djamena at the weekend. The group that left on Sunday included seven urban refugees from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), three urban Sudanese refugees and one person from the Central African Republic (CAR) who had been living in Dosseye camp in southern Chad.

Members of armed paramilitary groups are a serious threat to civilians who fled violence and insecurity and are now returning to their villages, Human Rights Watch has said in a report. People who have returned to their home regions have been killed, forcibly recruited into paramilitary groups, and threatened with death by armed men who in many cases have seized their land.

Some 110,000 Sudanese refugees over the age of 18 in eastern Chad will receive identity cards under a new programme launched with the support of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). “The ID cards are the equivalent of a ‘refugee passport’ allowing free movement within the host country and providing access to some basic services in line with the 1951 Geneva Refugee Convention,” agency spokesperson Ron Redmond told reporters in Geneva.

The Chadian government handed 82 under-18 child soldiers over to UNICEF during an official ceremony. The children were caught following armed clashes between the Chadian national army and rebels of the Union of the Resistance Forces (UFR).

Growing insecurity in eastern Chad is limiting aid workers’ access to refugees and displaced Chadians, aid workers say. Rebels and government troops recently clashed in eastern Chad and armed banditry – long a problem in the region – is on the rise, including the fatal shooting of a UN-trained national policeman on 13 May.

Aid agencies are racing to position food and other relief supplies for some 18,000 men, women and children from Central African Republic who fled to southern Chad, most of whom have taken refuge next to the border. Rains due in the coming weeks will cut access to the refugees, aid workers say. Up to 100 Central Africans continue to pour into Chad each day, fleeing armed attacks on civilians and fighting between rebels and government forces in northern CAR.

Heavy ground fighting between Chadian troops and rebels has erupted in the east, a day after the government said a rebel offensive had been defeated. The government said its forces had killed at least 100 rebels and some of its own soldiers had also died in an hour of combat near Am Dam. It said the rebels were retreating and looting as they left.

Awa was killed by her husband last November in Guelendeng, 150km south of the Chad capital N’djamena. Her death was the tipping point for the town’s women, who, appalled by the rampant violence they face, have decided to fight for their rights. In December dozens of women took part in a protest march, the first of its kind in Guelendeng, to condemn the violation of their rights and to call the government to account over the impunity that prevails.

On paper rebels and the military in Chad are in agreement: a child should not be part of any armed forces. But renewed insecurity over the last few months has triggered an increase in child recruitment, humanitarian workers say. In May 2007, during a return to calm following a peace accord between the government of Chad and various rebel groups, the government signed an agreement with the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) to remove children working from armed forces and rebel groups and assist them.

More than 100 CAR refugees crossed the volatile border to south-eastern Chad over the weekend, joining over 6,800 others who began arriving earlier this year in two sites near the remote Daha village registered by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Another 2,500 new arrivals are sheltering just across the border in the Chadian village of Massambaye, 125 kilometres east of Daha.