N’Djamena | Eleven people were killed in clashes between pastoralists and farmers in southern Chad, gripped by deadly conflicts between these communities, the provincial prosecutor told AFP on Tuesday evening.
The fighting took place between Sunday and Monday in a village in the province of Tandjilé-Est after the animals of a breeder ransacked a field. The farmers then attacked the pastoralists.
“The clashes left four people dead among Fulani herders and seven on the side of indigenous farmers, two of whom were killed on Monday by the police,” Abdoulaye Bono Kono, public prosecutor in Laï, told AFP. , in the province of Tandjilé-Est, adding that the police “opened fire by trying to dissuade the demonstrators from ransacking the symbols of the administration”.
The farmers attacked on Monday a “vehicle of the delegate of the national police, a vehicle of territorial security and the office of the prefect to protest against the provincial authorities who intervened to save breeders”, he added. he continued.
The arrival of security forces from neighboring provinces has allowed a return to calm, according to a local official who requested anonymity.
Fighting between communities is frequent in southern Chad, where many residents are armed. At the end of November, at least 22 people had been killed in clashes between herders and farmers in the Kabbia department in the south of the country after a field was destroyed by oxen.
These conflicts mainly oppose nomadic Arab herders and sedentary indigenous farmers, who accuse the former in particular of ransacking their fields by grazing their animals.
The south of Chad, with a milder climate and vegetation, has long attracted pastoralists from the Sahelian desert areas of the north, and is a region of transhumance. Some Arab nomadic communities have settled there for a long time and oppose indigenous farmers in land disputes.