N'DJAMENA, April 28, 2026 (BSS/AFP) - A fresh bout of fighting linked to 
tensions over access to water between two ethnic communities has killed three 
people in eastern Chad, a local official told AFP on Tuesday.

Monday's clashes come after fighting erupted on Saturday between the Tama and 
Zaghawa peoples over the use of a well near the border with war-torn Sudan, 
leaving 42 dead.

"Sadly, three people have died and 10 been wounded in new armed clashes 
between the two communities," Brahim Issa Galmaye, the state's representative 
in the border province of Wadi Fira, told AFP.

The latest fighting took place in the same Guereda sub-prefecture as 
Saturday's clashes, though in a different part of the rural area, Issa 
Galmaye explained.

Several ministers, senior local officials and the army's chief of general 
staff were dispatched to the area on Sunday after the Tama-Zaghawa clashes 
broke out.

President Mahamat Idriss Deby has Zaghawa ancestry through his father, who 
himself served as the country's leader until his death at the hands of rebels 
in 2021.

Chad is frequently the scene of violent confrontations between its various 
ethnic communities, especially in several rural areas where disagreements 
over land, livestock and water sometimes turn fatal.

Many of these pit sedentary Indigenous farmers against nomadic Arab herders, 
especially in the desert country's east, across the long and porous border 
with Sudan.

According to estimates from the International Crisis Group, herder-farmer 
conflicts killed more than 1,000 Chadians and wounded more than 2,000 between 
2021 and 2024.