In a press release ,Oxfam has criticised international donors, particularly Germany, France, Japan, Italy, Spain and Australia, for their inadequate or non-existent response to the UN humanitarian appeal for Chad and called on them to give generously to the aid effort. Penny Lawrence, international director of Oxfam said: 'In stark contrast with the generosity of the public the international response to the humanitarian crisis in Chad has been very disappointing.'

Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir and Chadian president Idriss Déby Itno signed a reconciliation accord in the Saudi Arabia capital, Riyadh, on Thursday, aimed at ending tensions between their two countries. The televised signing took place at a summit hosted by Saudi King Abdullah, with the deal committing each of the parties to refrain from supporting rebels in the other country.

British aid agency Oxfam says urgent funding is needed to address water shortages being experienced by some 140,000 Chadian internally displaced persons. "We need more funding to enable us to adequately intervene in the provision of water and sanitation facilities in the IDP camps which are inadequate." Michel Anglade, campaign and policy advisor at Oxfam's West Africa regional office in Dakar told IRIN.

Some 9,000 Chadians have arrived in UN refugee agency trucks and on their own at the Habile site for internally displaced persons after brutal attacks on two villages left houses torched and the ground strewn with dead. A United Nations team headed by UNHCR reached the burnt out villages of Tiero and Marena on Sunday, a week after the March 31 attacks.

The Chadian government has accused Sudanese janjawid militiamen of attacking two villages in eastern Chad, killing 29 people. “Today there are between 6,000 and 8,000 more people who are exposed without shelter and who have completely lost everything,” government spokesman Hourmadji Moussa Doumgor told reporters on Monday.