Chad is failing to protect its civilians from armed groups who kill, mutilate and rape in the conflict stricken central African country, an international refugee body said. In a report released late on Wednesday, the Norwegian Refugee Council said the estimated 172,600 people who have been uprooted by fighting in eastern Chad over the past two years often lack access to water, food and health care.

The French Defence Ministry is helping UNHCR and a new museum of primitive art in Paris to deliver hundreds of toys to young Sudanese and Central African Republic refugees in Chad. A small party of officers and men from the army and air force arrived at Quai Branly Museum near the Eiffel Tower on Thursday and helped staff of the UN refugee agency and the museum to load 35 boxloads of toys onto two trucks for transportation to a military airport in Orleans.

Some 300 people took part in a march through the Chad capital, N'Djamena, on Wednesday to express solidarity with the country's almost half-a-million refugees and internally displaced persons. The UNHCR-organized event was one of many activities planned by UNHCR around the country to mark World Refugee Day on June 20.

Trade unions are expressing their concerns over what they call an "escalating violence" by security officers against their representatives all over Chad. The country has been paralysed by an unpopular general strike for over one month. The International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) has denounced what it called "the recent escalation in anti-union repression in Chad," where a public sector strike launched a month ago by the Inter-Union Group continues.

Reporters Without Borders has been told by the Chadian government that the country's newspapers can again be published without having to obtain prior approval for each issue from a censorship committee that was set up under a state of emergency in November 2006. "This a great relief," the press freedom organisation said. "The Chadian government has finally realised that all censorship did was humiliate and undermine the press, which was unfairly blamed for many problems

In a press release ,Oxfam has criticised international donors, particularly Germany, France, Japan, Italy, Spain and Australia, for their inadequate or non-existent response to the UN humanitarian appeal for Chad and called on them to give generously to the aid effort. Penny Lawrence, international director of Oxfam said: 'In stark contrast with the generosity of the public the international response to the humanitarian crisis in Chad has been very disappointing.'

Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir and Chadian president Idriss Déby Itno signed a reconciliation accord in the Saudi Arabia capital, Riyadh, on Thursday, aimed at ending tensions between their two countries. The televised signing took place at a summit hosted by Saudi King Abdullah, with the deal committing each of the parties to refrain from supporting rebels in the other country.

British aid agency Oxfam says urgent funding is needed to address water shortages being experienced by some 140,000 Chadian internally displaced persons. "We need more funding to enable us to adequately intervene in the provision of water and sanitation facilities in the IDP camps which are inadequate." Michel Anglade, campaign and policy advisor at Oxfam's West Africa regional office in Dakar told IRIN.

Some 9,000 Chadians have arrived in UN refugee agency trucks and on their own at the Habile site for internally displaced persons after brutal attacks on two villages left houses torched and the ground strewn with dead. A United Nations team headed by UNHCR reached the burnt out villages of Tiero and Marena on Sunday, a week after the March 31 attacks.

The Chadian government has accused Sudanese janjawid militiamen of attacking two villages in eastern Chad, killing 29 people. “Today there are between 6,000 and 8,000 more people who are exposed without shelter and who have completely lost everything,” government spokesman Hourmadji Moussa Doumgor told reporters on Monday.

At least 65 Chadians were killed and up to 8,000 driven from their homes when Sudanese Janjawid fighters attacked and destroyed two villages in east Chad over the weekend, Chad's military has said.

It's affordable, and central to stopping deforestation in Chad. But, butane gas has a long way to go before it becomes a household staple in this Sahelian country: many Chadians have a fixed belief that gas is simply too dangerous to use.

The UN refugee agency and its partners are dealing with a new wave of displacement in south-eastern Chad following a deadly attack at the weekend against the villages of Tiero and Marena.

John Holmes, the United Nations’ Emergency Relief Coordinator, has warned that the international community is dragging its feet on funding for humanitarian operations in Chad and is “underestimating” the scale of the crisis there.

The United Nations refugee agency is helping to move hundreds of Chadians from a volatile border area to a camp deeper in Sudan at the refugees’ own request because of ongoing insecurity.

The UN refugee agency on Tuesday issued a US$6.2 million supplementary appeal to fund protection and assistance programmes for tens of thousands of internally displaced people (IDPs) in eastern Chad.

Attacks on civilians and aid groups have intensified sharply along the Chad-Sudan border in the last two weeks, as the violence in Darfur continues to spill over into its African neighbor.

UK aid agency Oxfam has warned a new humanitarian catastrophe, like that in Darfur, could happen in Chad if ethnic conflict is not brought under control. Inter-ethnic fighting along the border with Darfur has displaced tens of thousands of Chadians in the past year.

Reporters Without Borders has called for the release of journalist and human rights activist Marcel Ngargoto, who has been held by gendarmes in the southern town of Moissala since 31 January. Ngargoto works for Radio Brakoss, a Moissala-based community radio. He is also secretary-general of Human Rights Without Borders (DHSF).

Homes ablaze. Villagers slaughtered. Women and girls raped. Survivors scattered in terror. Civilians in eastern Chad are sharing the cruel fate of their neighbours in Darfur, hostages to Sudan’s ruthless solution to rebel attacks in the region. The Janjawid militias who in recent years have laid to waste vast areas of western Sudan, form the backbone of the armed groups who are killing, tormenting and displacing civilians from targeted ethnic groups such as the Dajo and the Masalit in eastern Chad. The aim of the attacks appears to be to clear vast areas of communities primarily identified by the Janjawid as "African" rather than "Arab", and to drive them further from the border with Sudan.