Africa News

UN: Aid operations in Chad halted for a day

May 2, 2008, 11:17 GMT

Geneva - All non-emergency aid operations in Chad are to be suspended for 24 hours in protest at the killing of a humanitarian worker in the east of the country, the UN said Friday. Work would stop from Friday to Saturday to highlight the deteriorating security situation in Chad and attacks on aid workers. Pascal Marlinge the director of Save the Children in Chad was shot in the head Thursday after two armed men in uniform stopped the three-vehicle convoy he was travelling with between Farchana and Andre. It was the second death of an aid worker in Chad in less than a year. A driver for the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, had been shot at the end of 2007. The country has been plagued by inter-ethnic conflict in recent years while in the east it has been attacked by raiders spilling over from Sudan's Darfur region. Humanitarian vehicles were often a target. Elisabeth Byers, spokeswoman for the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), said the stoppage was to highlight the problem faced by humanitarian workers and was a mark of respect for Pascal Marlinge. The real victims though, she said, were the people deprived of aid because of security issues.

Africa News

UN: Aid operations in Chad halted for a day

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