N’DJAMENA: A drone from war-torn Sudan killed 17 people when it bombed the border town of Tine in eastern Chad, the Chadian government said on Thursday.

The incident on Wednesday was the latest spillover into Chad from the conflict in Sudan, where the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have been fighting the Sudanese army since April 2023.

The paramilitaries have conducted several operations near the Chad border, leading to deaths on the Chadian side.

Chad shut the border on February 23 in a move it said was aimed at preventing “any risk of the conflict spreading”.

“Despite various firm warnings addressed to the different belligerents in the Sudan conflict and the closure of the border... the town of Tine... has again been the target of a drone attack,” a spokesman for the Chadian government said Thursday in a statement.

“This latest assault of extreme gravity has caused the death of 17 of our compatriots and left several others injured,” it added.

Late on Wednesday, a military source said a drone attack from Sudan attributed to the RSF had killed 16 people in Tine.

The RSF denied involvement in a post on Telegram, blaming Sudan’s army, its rival in the three-year civil war.

The Sudanese army, in turn, issued a statement on Thursday denying the claim, asserting that the drone belonged to the RSF.

Chadian President Mahamat Idriss Deby called a meeting of the defence and security council during the night. He ordered the army to “retaliate starting from tonight to any attack coming from Sudan”, according to a presidency statement on social media.

The UN’s representative in Chad warned that the Sudan conflict must not spread over the border.

“Chad which has shown exemplary solidarity since the start of the Sudanese crisis must not become an area where the conflict can spread,” it said in a statement Thursday.

A rocket launched from Sudan caused damage at the end of February in Tine, where 15 soldiers and eight civilians had already been killed as a result of the conflict since late December, according to a tally.

Published in Dawn, March 20th, 2026