February 05, 2007	Monday	Muharram 16, 1428

ADRE, Chad: Some fighters cover themselves in lucky charms while others load rockets onto pick-up trucks in preparation for another clash with rebels in the desolate scrubland along Chad’s eastern border with Sudan.

Morale is high among the Chadian soldiers here in Adre, a border town on the main route into Sudan’s Darfur region, after they repulsed an attack by Chadian rebels three days ago which they say was launched from Sudanese territory.

The raid was the latest in a series along a more than 400 km long stretch of border launched by insurgents fighting to overthrow President Idriss Deby. The United Nations has said around a dozen civilians were killed in the fighting.

“It went well ... We burnt several of their vehicles. They lost a lot of men,” said Delley Wardougou, a young Chadian soldier sat on the bonnet of an army pick-up truck in the courtyard of the local prefect’s offices.

“It wasn’t too difficult. It was good. In any case morale is high. We still have good morale, we’re lucky,” he said, as his colleagues cleaned their machine guns behind him.

Chad’s border with Sudan, a desolate expanse of parched earth and dusty scrub, was already desperately poor and prone to banditry even before conflict in Darfur destabilised it further.

The region is home to 230,000 Sudanese refugees as well as 110,000 internally displaced Chadians and 46,000 refugees from Central African Republic to the south, according to the United Nations refugee agency UNHCR.

Civilians in border towns like Adre are exposed to random raids in a cat-and-mouse war in which the rebel strategy appears to be lightning surprise assaults and equally rapid retreats, aimed at throwing the Chadian army off guard.

Soldiers lie in the shade outside the main hospital, where French aid agency Medecins Sans Frontieres says more than 180 wounded were brought in the latest fighting.—Reuters