Chadian President Mahamat Déby has ordered his military to retaliate against attacks originating in Sudan after a drone killed 17 people during a funeral in Al-Tina, a border town.
Déby denounced the mid-March attack, calling it “outrageous and a blatant aggression” that violated Chad’s territorial integrity.
It was not clear whether the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) or paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) launched the attack. The two sides have been embroiled in a civil war since April 2023, and Chad increasingly has been caught in the fray. Two Chadian troops were killed in a late December 2025 strike on an Army camp by a drone originating from Sudan. Seven more were killed in January during an RSF attack on a Chadian military camp. Chad closed its border with Sudan in February after more clashes linked to the war killed five Chadian Soldiers.
Gassim Cherif, Chadian minister of communication, said repeated incursions by the warring parties in Sudan “undermine the sovereignty of Chad.”
“We will not give in to attempts to destabilize Chadian institutions,” Cherif said in a report by Radio France Internationale (RFI). “Not a single kilometre of the border escapes our control.”
A security source told RFI that more than 15,000 Soldiers with the Chadian Army and the Joint Force are stationed along the 1,400-kilometer border between the two countries. The Joint Force was established in November 2025 between the Chadian Army and Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar’s eastern Libyan forces to secure their shared border.
“Despite these measures, violations of Chadian territory have continued in various forms,” researcher Bourdjolbo Tchoudiba wrote for the Africa Center for Strategic Studies. “These episodes mark a critical shift: Sudan’s conflict is no longer simply a neighboring crisis with indirect effects — it has become a direct security threat for Chad.”
Local sources told the Middle East Monitor that Chadian troops also dug trenches and built earthen barriers along the boundary separating the Chadian and Sudanese sides of Al-Tina. Chad also launched a campaign to collect weapons and military vehicles from the adjacent town of Tine and locations within the Sudanese border. Tine, which straddles both countries, is the last site under the Sudanese military’s control in the Darfur region, most of which is controlled by the RSF. The Sudanese government has accused Chad of supporting the RSF with weapons and mercenaries, which N’Djamena denies.
Most Tine residents on both sides belong to the Zaghawa ethnic group. In Sudan, Tine residents have rejected Chad’s efforts to collect weapons, leading to even more tension on the border. Political and military ties between Zaghawa communities in both countries have long generated regional tensions, wrote Tchoudiba, who works with Laboratoire Interdisciplinaire d’Étude du Politique Hannah Arendt and the Centre d’Études Africaines de Cluj-Napoca.
Some Zaghawa militias support the SAF, while segments of Arab, Gorane and Toubou in northern Chad are aligned with the RSF. The situation is complicated by the presence of community militias, self-defense committees and rebel factions that operate fluidly between alliances and “within a volatile security ecosystem” influenced by the Sudanese war, according to Tchoudiba.
The war in Sudan has left tens of thousands dead and displaced several million people, including about 1.3 million who fled to Chad. The Emergency Room Council in Al Tina reported fresh waves of displacement after the March attack on Al-Tina and that access to food and basic necessities was critically limited.
