Rebel fighters in Chad say they have launched a new offensive in the east of the country and called on European powers to press Idriss Deby, the president, for a political settlement. The fighters intend to march on the capital Ndjamena, Abderaman Koulamallah, a spokesman for the National Alliance, said on Thursday.

Increased corruption and controls on nongovernmental organizations placed Chad on a list of the world’s most repressive societies for the first time, putting the country on par with China, Zimbabwe and Syria. The finding is part of the Worst of the Worst: The World’s Most Repressive Societies 2008, a new report released by Freedom House.

The European Union military force in Chad does not have enough troops to escort humanitarian convoys in the conflict-torn eastern region where a French aid worker was killed by gunmen, a force spokesman said on Friday.

Just over two months after the latest major eruption of fighting in Sudan's West Darfur region, the UN refugee agency has transferred some 5,400 new Sudanese refugees to two camps in eastern Chad. But UNHCR estimates that another 8,000 people remain scattered in several villages along the volatile Chad-Sudan border.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has provided temporary housing and relief supplies to more than 2,000 Darfurians who were left homeless after a fire swept through part of the Goz Amer refugee camp in eastern Chad last week. The agency has distributed mats, blankets, kitchen sets and jerry cans to some 2,130 refugees from Sudan’s war-torn Darfur region, who are currently being housed in three schools at the camp until family tents arrive in the coming days.

Condemning continued armed activity of rebel groups in eastern Chad, members of the Security Council have expressed their concern over the humanitarian situation in that region and the neighbouring north-eastern Central African Republic (CAR), as the number of displaced persons continues to swell.

Sudan has accused Chad of bombing a village in Darfur, vowing to respond to the "aggressive and serious" violations of a fledgling peace agreement. Ali al-Sadiq, the Sudanese foreign ministry spokesman, said that a Chadian military helicopter "bombed a place called Um Tamjoob" on Wednesday.

Wracked by decades of political insecurity, HIV/AIDS simply wasn't a priority in Chad for many years. A chronic lack of health workers and uncertain funding delayed efforts further, but the government of Chad is finally starting to take action. Chad covers around 1.3 million square kilometres and has a population of less than 10 million.

The Chadian government has continued to detain an unknown number of people without charges since rebels invaded the capital N’djamena for two days in early February, despite lifting a state of emergency on 15 March. "Detainees should be released immediately or charged with a crime and accorded all their rights, including immediate access to a lawyer and a hearing before an impartial judge to determine the lawfulness of their detention,” Human Rights Watch (HRW)’s Africa Director Georgette Gagnon said in a statement issued on 20 March.

Chad has lifted a state of emergency and night curfew imposed across the oil-rich central African nation after a failed bid by opposition forces to seize the capital, Ndjamena, in February. A government statement said on Sunday: "A curfew, which was put imposed in special circumstances, was lifted today throughout Chadian territory."

The United Nations refugee agency has begun moving some of the estimated 14,000 refugees who recently fled violence in the Central African Republic (CAR) away from the border in southern Chad to more accessible areas. Ron Redmond, spokesperson for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), said a first group of nearly 700 people was transferred on Saturday from the border town of Maya to a temporary transit site 25 kilometres further inland, near the village of Dembo.

Most of the roughly 50,000 people in the Amboko and Dosseye refugee camps near Goré, in the tropical forest of southern Chad, have fled across the border from neighbouring Central African Republic (CAR), but efforts to prevent and treat HIV among the camp residents are still in their infancy.

Sitting on a plastic mat in an outdoor classroom at a site for people displaced by violence outside the town of Goz Beida in southeastern Chad, Ibrahim Abdoulaye Moussa has reason to pay attention in class. "I'm in school to save my country," said the boy who is one of 180,000 displaced Chadians scattered around the vast semi-desert east of the country. "I dream of being president."

Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir and Chadian President Idriss Deby signed a peace agreement on Thursday designed to end cross-border rebel attacks in a region which includes Sudan's conflict-ravaged Darfur area. The signing, witnessed by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) head Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, also aims to revive a string of past pacts that have failed to end fighting on both sides of the Chad-Sudan border.

The swelling numbers of Darfur refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs) living in eastern Chad is seriously straining the capacity of both the arid local environment and the region’s basic infrastructure, a United Nations aid official said today, warning that the humanitarian situation remained extremely precarious.

People living with HIV in Chad risk becoming victims of the explosion of violence in the capital, N'Djamena, in early February. During clashes between the army and groups of rebels from the east of the country, health services were damaged and many organisations working to fight the epidemic were looted.

Some of the young people who seek help at the Youth Information and Orientation Centre for Reproductive Health (CIOJ) in N'Djamena, capital of Chad, do not understand how they became pregnant or contracted a sexually transmitted infection (STI). Workers at the centre blame the high levels of ignorance on the failure of parents to talk to their children about sex.

As refugees began moving from the northern Cameroonian town of Kousseri to a more permanent site in Maltam some 32 kilometres away this week, services and facilities were being rapidly prepared to accept them but conditions remain extremely basic. Refugees, most of whom fled Chad at the beginning of February when anti-government rebels launched an attack on the capital N’djamena, started being trucked to Maltam on 16 February.

Violence in eastern Chad is preventing aid workers from reaching thousands of refugees who fled Sudanese government attacks in Darfur last week, with a new wave of refugees expected after fresh bombardments. Beatrice Godefroy, head of the Swiss branch of Doctors Without Borders in Chad, told Reuters up to 8,000 refugees had poured across the border from Darfur last week and were living rough in the desolate area around the border town of Birak.

Around 135 rebels captured when they attacked the Chadian capital N’djamena in early February were displayed by Chadian police on 13 February, some of whom were identified as children. "Among these prisoners there are minors,” Interior Minister Ahmat Mahamat Bachir, said during a press conference.