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A simmering local dispute over access to a water well has exploded into deadly inter-ethnic violence in eastern Chad, leaving at least 42 people dead and 10 others wounded, senior Chadian officials have confirmed. What began as a confrontation between two families in Wadi Fira province quickly escalated into a sustained cycle of retaliatory attacks that spread across multiple communities, leaving multiple villages burned to the ground in its wake.

Chadian government announced on Sunday that a high-level delegation led by Deputy Prime Minister Limane Mahamat has been dispatched to the conflict zone to oversee security operations and mediate local tensions. Officials confirmed that the violence has now been contained, and stability is gradually being restored to the area.

Deadly inter-communal clashes are a persistent crisis across this central African nation, where long-standing frictions between farming and pastoral communities, compounded by deep-seated ethnic tensions, have created a repeating pattern of violence. Competition over increasingly scarce water resources and grazing land is the most common trigger for these outbreaks of conflict.

In recent months, the already fragile security situation along Chad’s eastern border has been further exacerbated by the arrival of tens of thousands of refugees fleeing the ongoing civil war in neighboring Sudan. The influx of new residents has placed enormous additional strain on limited natural resources, driving up resource competition and stoking broader security tensions. On Sunday, Deputy Prime Minister Mahamat reaffirmed the Chadian government’s commitment to deploying all necessary measures to stop Sudan’s conflict from spilling over and destabilizing the country’s border regions.

This latest deadly incident is part of a years-long trend of escalating communal violence across Chad. Over the past several years, hundreds of people have been killed in these clashes; in November last year alone, 33 people died in a similar conflict over a contested water well in the southwestern town of Dibebe. Data from the International Crisis Group, a leading international think-tank, shows that between 2021 and 2024, roughly 100 separate communal clashes across the country left more than 1,000 people dead and another 2,000 injured. Global human rights organization Amnesty International has also documented seven major outbreaks of herder-farmer violence between 2022 and 2024, which collectively claimed 98 lives.

In a report released last year, Amnesty International linked the rising frequency and severity of these clashes to the accelerating impacts of climate change, which has worsened drought conditions and scarcity of critical resources across the Sahel region. The organization also criticized Chadian authorities for failing to effectively protect civilian populations, noting that security force responses to emerging violence are often delayed, and few perpetrators are ever held legally accountable for their actions. “This pattern of inaction fuels a widespread sense of impunity and deepens feelings of marginalization within affected communities,” the report stated.

In the early hours of Saturday, a long-simmering local dispute over access to a critical water source between two families in eastern Chad erupted into widespread, revenge-fueled violence that left at least 42 people dead and 10 others injured, the Central African nation’s deputy prime minister confirmed in a statement late Sunday.

Deputy Prime Minister Limane Mahamat made the confirmation during an official visit to Igote, the small border village in Wadi Fira province where the violence unfolded, located just kilometers from Chad’s shared boundary with conflict-wracked Sudan. The injured victims have already been evacuated to the region’s main provincial health facility for urgent medical care, Mahamat added.

The cycle of retaliatory attacks quickly spread across multiple communities in the area, forcing Chadian military forces to deploy to curb the violence. According to Mahamat, the army’s rapid intervention successfully halted further bloodshed, and public order has now been fully restored across the conflict zone.

In response to the violence, Chadian authorities have launched two parallel processes: a traditional community mediation initiative to resolve underlying tensions in Igote, and formal judicial investigations to hold those responsible for the deaths and destruction accountable.

Intercommunal violence driven by competition over scarce natural resources is a recurring crisis across Chad. Just last year, similar clashes between farming and pastoral communities in southwestern portions of the country also claimed 42 lives and destroyed hundreds of residential structures.

Mahamat stressed that the Chadian government will implement every necessary measure to prevent further instability in this high-risk border region, which has faced growing strain since the outbreak of full-scale civil war in Sudan in early 2023. For months, eastern Chad has hosted hundreds of thousands of Sudanese refugees who fled the cross-border conflict, placing unprecedented pressure on local water, food, and land resources that has exacerbated existing intercommunal tensions.

Back in February, Chad’s government took the drastic step of closing its entire border with Sudan indefinitely, framing the move as an effort to stop the spillover of Sudanese fighting into its territory after multiple armed incursions by militias aligned with Sudan’s warring factions.

According to United Nations estimates, the ongoing civil war in Sudan has already killed more than 40,000 people, though independent humanitarian groups warn the actual death toll is likely far higher, as many casualties in hard-to-reach conflict zones are never counted. The conflict has spawned the world’s most severe current humanitarian crisis, displacing more than 14 million people from their homes, triggering widespread deadly disease outbreaks, and pushing multiple regions of Sudan into full-blown famine.

After years of near-eradication, piracy off the coast of Somalia has returned with a sharp uptick in attacks, prompting maritime security officials to issue urgent warnings for commercial and civilian shipping transiting the region. The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO), the leading body monitoring maritime security in the Indian Ocean, has upgraded the regional threat assessment to “substantial” following a spate of hijackings and attempted boardings in the past seven days.

The most recent incident unfolded Sunday, when unidentified unauthorized individuals seized a cargo vessel roughly six nautical miles off the Somali coastal town of Garacad, steering the ship into Somali territorial waters. No additional details on the crew, cargo, or current status of the vessel have been released as of initial reporting.

This hijacking marks the fourth confirmed targeted vessel in a single week. On April 21, a separate hijacking was reported off the coast of Mareeyo in northern Somalia. Just one day later, security officials confirmed that pirates seized the oil tanker *Honour 25* carrying 17 crew members as it sailed near the Somali coast. Under pirate control, the vessel — whose crew includes 10 Pakistani nationals, four Indonesians, one Indian, one Sri Lankan, and one Myanmarese citizen — has been anchored close to shore between the fishing towns of Xaafun and Bander Beyla. Two more vessels, a Somali-flagged fishing boat and another oil tanker, were seized this past Thursday. On the same day, two armed individuals in a small craft attempted to board a second cargo vessel, only retreating after the ship’s crew fired warning shots to repel the attack.

In its official advisory, UKMTO noted that current sea and weather conditions are ideal for small boat operations, the tactic most commonly used by pirate action groups (PAGs) to approach and board larger unsuspecting vessels. “Due to the increased threat of possible PAG activity, vessels are advised to transit with caution,” the statement read.

This resurgence marks a stark reversal of years of progress. Just three years ago, pirate attacks in this stretch of the Indian Ocean — once one of the most dangerous waterways for global shipping — had been almost completely eliminated. At the peak of Somali piracy between 2005 and 2012, the World Bank estimates pirate groups earned between $339 million and $413 million by holding crew and vessels hostage for large ransom payments, disrupting global trade routes and forcing shipping companies to pay huge premiums for insurance and security escorts.

Three years into Sudan’s brutal civil conflict, orthopedic surgeon Dr. Jamal Eltaeb has faced one impossible, gut-wrenching choice after another. Which wounded patient will get the last vial of painkiller? Is it ethical to operate without proper anesthesia to save a dying child? Where will the next liter of generator fuel come from to keep the hospital’s lights on? Through all of it, only one decision has ever felt inevitable: he would stay and keep working.

Eltaeb now leads Al Nao Hospital in Omdurman, the urban neighbor of Sudan’s capital Khartoum, a territory that has changed hands repeatedly between Sudan’s national army and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), the country’s powerful paramilitary group. As front lines shifted closer to the facility and patient overflow stretched its capacity to breaking point, many of his colleagues fled for safety. But the soft-spoken 54-year-old surgeon refused to leave, even after repeated bombing strikes on the hospital and the near-total depletion of critical medical supplies.

“I weighed the options of staying here, and taking care of your patients and helping other people that need you as a skilled surgeon, rather than choose your own safety,” Eltaeb explained in an interview with The Associated Press.

He is one of thousands of Sudanese medical workers and civilians who have stepped forward to fill the gap left by a largely disengaged international community, which has turned most of its attention and humanitarian resources to ongoing conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East. Eltaeb has borne firsthand witness to the human cost of the war, which the United Nations estimates has killed tens of thousands of people and pushed Sudan’s entire public health system to the brink of collapse. Today, nearly 40% of the country’s hospitals are no longer functional; many have been stripped of critical equipment or repurposed as military bases by armed factions. Even after the Sudanese army retook full control of Khartoum in recent months, Al Nao remains one of the only fully operational health centers in the entire capital region.

Walking through the hospital grounds with AP journalists, Eltaeb pointed to the lingering scars of the conflict’s worst months. A shattered window across the courtyard marks the spot where a patient’s family member was killed in a strike. A tattered canvas tent is the last remaining structure of the temporary encampment erected to hold hundreds of mass casualties when the fighting reached its peak.

“We were working everywhere, in tents, outside, on the floor, doing everything to save patients’ lives,” he said.

Eltaeb’s extraordinary sacrifice has earned global recognition: he is this year’s recipient of the $1 million Aurora Prize for Awakening Humanity, an award that honors individuals who risk their own lives to save others. He has already donated a large portion of the prize funds to medical and humanitarian organizations working across Sudan and neighboring crisis zones.

Before the war broke out in April 2023, Al Nao was a quiet community hospital that rarely filled its 100 available beds. When RSF fighters captured large swathes of Khartoum in the first weeks of conflict, wounded residents flooded the facility seeking care. Eltaeb’s original hospital closed just days after the war began, so he relocated to Al Nao to help. By July 2023, nearly all the facility’s senior staff had fled the capital, leaving Eltaeb to take charge of the hospital with only a small team of remaining employees and local volunteers.

For weeks at a time, the hospital had no access to grid electricity, relying on irregular fuel deliveries from the army to keep generators running. Antibiotics, painkillers, and anesthetics quickly ran out as demand for care surged. Just a month after Eltaeb took leadership, the facility was hit by its first bombing strike.

“From that moment, we knew that we are a target … And from that time, they didn’t stop targeting us,” Eltaeb said. The RSF carried out three additional strikes on the hospital in the months that followed.

On one particularly devastating day in late 2024, an airstrike hit a nearby market, leaving more than 100 wounded people desperate for care. Eltaeb and his small team were forced to triage patients under extreme pressure, making impossible calls on who would receive what little care was available. Eight people died that day.

“You choose … as if you can choose who is going to live and who is going to die,” he said.

The day brought an even more harrowing choice: Eltaeb had to perform emergency amputations on two young children without general anesthetic, as the children were bleeding heavily and there was no time to move them to the damaged operating wing. Using only local anesthetic, he removed an arm and a leg from a 9-year-old boy, and a leg from his 11-year-old sister. Today, Eltaeb keeps photos of the surgeries on his phone, to show the world the unreported horror of Sudan’s conflict that few outsiders have witnessed.

To keep the facility supplied, Eltaeb’s team turned to a network of local volunteers. When the team posts requests for critical medications on social media, local pharmacists who have closed their shops amid the conflict often donate their stock, sending volunteers to collect the supplies. Volunteer Nazar Mohamed spent months navigating Omdurman’s bomb-damaged streets, often traveling by bicycle, to deliver medications while fighting echoed across the city. International donations came from aid groups and the global Sudanese diaspora, with Sudanese doctors living overseas providing remote clinical guidance for treating mass casualties when standard medications run out. When medical supplies ran low, the team improvised: they built makeshift beds and crutches from scrap wood and repurposed ordinary clothing as bandages and splints.

Today, fighting has shifted away from the Khartoum area to other regions of Sudan, and many international aid groups that supported Al Nao have redirected their limited resources to harder-hit zones. Eltaeb says the hospital currently has enough funding to cover staff salaries and generator fuel only through June, and it needs roughly $40,000 per month to stay operational. While several countries have pledged reconstruction aid to Sudan, local medical leaders worry that the ongoing conflict in the Middle East will divert attention and funding, particularly from Gulf states that had originally promised major support for Sudan’s recovery.

Across Omdurman at Al Shaabi Hospital, which was occupied by the RSF for most of the war, director Dr. Osman Ismail Osman says the few hundred thousand dollars in government funding provided for repairs is nowhere near enough to rebuild the completely destroyed facility. Millions of dollars of medical equipment lie broken and piled in dusty corridors, scattered with chunks of concrete from damaged walls and twisted metal bed frames. The goal of reopening the hospital for emergency care in the coming weeks is a distant ambition.

But for medical workers like Eltaeb, who have learned to keep working through even the most impossible circumstances, hope persists. “I believe I did my best as a doctor as a Sudanese,” the surgeon said.