N’DJAMENA: A drone strike in Chad on the border with Sudan killed four people earlier this week, a government official said on Thursday.

The civil war in Sudan, where the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have been fighting the Sudanese army since April 2023, regularly spills over into Chad.

“We regret four deaths and 14 injured in an attack by a drone of unknown origin in Bamina,” a border town, Brahim Issa Galmaye, the government representative in Wadi-Fira province, told AFP.

“We are going to launch an investigation to determine the origin of this attack,” he added.

Drones regularly target all-terrain vehicles leaving Sudan for Chad, a local source told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity.

In May, a drone strike, initially blamed on Sudanese paramilitaries, hit the border town of Tine in eastern Chad, killing at least 14 people.

The RSF denied responsibility.

Chad — which the Sudanese army accuses of being aligned with the paramilitaries — shut its desert border with Sudan in February, citing “repeated incursions” by armed groups.

Chad’s government officially maintains it is neutral in the conflict raging in its neighbor.

The war has killed more than 200,000 people and forced more than 12 million Sudanese to flee their homes, nearly one million of whom have crossed into Chad.