Chadian human rights groups say what began as cattle raiding has become “a veritable armed conflict” in southeastern Chad as inter-communal clashes escalate, imperiling efforts by aid agencies to help the wounded and displaced.

Meanwhile, the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) on Tuesday confirmed that the recent violence, which started on 4 November, had left more than 220 people dead and appeared to mirror that of the unrest in the neighbouring Darfur region of Sudan.

“We fear the inter-communal hostilities are spiraling out of control and could threaten the entire southeastern region of Chad,” Ron Redmond, UNHCR spokesman, told reporters in Geneva. At least 20 villages have been attacked in the past two weeks in the region south of Goz Beida, he said.

The Chadian government on Monday declared a state of emergency in the regions of Salamat, Ouaddai, Wadi Fira, Hadjer Lamis, Borkou-Ennedi-Tibesti, Moyen Chari, Mandoul and the capital, N’djamena. It also said authorities could “use all means at their disposition” to put an end to the clashes and were authorised to censor the media.

“The Sudanese government, not content to have sown desolation in Darfur, provoking a massive influx of refugees into Chad for which we bear the consequences, wants now to export this internal conflict on Chadian territory,” Prime Minister Pascal Yoadimnadji said in a statement.

There are 218,000 Sudanese refugees in Chad. The Chadian government of President Idriss Deby already faces an armed rebellion in the east of the country.

In the past week some 5,000 newly displaced Chadians have converged on a site for internally displaced people in Habile, 45 km southeast of Goz Beida, Redmond said. An undetermined number of others are fleeing elsewhere near Goz Beida, he said, adding to some 68,000 Chadians who have been displaced within eastern Chad in the past year.

UNHCR urged the international community to quickly put international troops on the ground to help protect Chadian civilians and Sudanese refugees, as well as aid workers trying to help them. The UN Security Council in August adopted a resolution calling for the deployment of a multi-dimensional UN presence in Chad and neighbouring Central African Republic.

A UNHCR-led interagency mission that went to assess the recently attacked village of Louboutigue had to flee when gunfire, believed to be warning shots, erupted from nearby millet fields by unseen gunmen.

Witnesses described people with their eyes gouged out, elderly women with third-degree burns on their backs and arms caused by collapsed thatched huts set aflame and miles and miles of brushland that had been torched.

“No one was injured, but it was just a small sampling of the terror that tens of thousands of Chadians are now experiencing daily in the southeast,” Redmond, the UNHCR spokesman said.

Relief workers said many areas have become virtual no-go zones. In the village of Bandicao, about 80 km south of Goz Beida, residents themselves warned humanitarian workers that it was unsafe to evacuate the wounded because gunmen were lurking about.

The Chadian military sent a convoy to Bandicao on Monday night to help with evacuation, but it only had the means to take away the most seriously wounded.

The Chadian Association of non-Violence and the Association for Fundamental Freedoms in Chad recently visited the southeastern region. It said it registered 63 dead and 26 wounded in the villages of Djerlo, Kerfi and Agourtouloum, located about 45 km from Goz Beida between 30 October and 10 November.

“Besides the number of victims, the general report is one of desolation: burned villages, homes destroyed, grain lofts destroyed, cattle decimated,” their joint statement said on Monday.

“That which began as acts of banditry linked to theft of cattle has transformed today into a veritable armed conflict. The main targeted victims are the native populations of ethnic Dadjos and Massalites of the cantons of Kado, Oauadikadja, Koloy, Bahr Azoum and Mouro.”

The rights groups said the problem was complex and efforts to identify the perpetrators were difficult. But they said the displaced spoke of four groups of armed men, notably the Janjawid, Toboros, Bachmarga and rebels.

Redmond said accounts from displaced Chadians were similar to one another.

“The assailants [they say] are almost always identified as being of Arab ethnicity, oftentimes known personally by victims as neighbours with whom they had lived for generations,” Redmond said. “They are often well-armed, particularly with Kalashnikovs; on horseback camelback or in trucks; sometimes in military attire, sometimes in civilian attire.”