A drone from Sudan killed 17 people when it bombed the border town of Tiné in eastern Chad on Wednesday evening, according to a toll released by the Chadian government on Thursday.

"Despite the various firm warnings issued to the different belligerents in the Sudanese conflict and the closure of the border between the two countries, the locality of Tiné (...) was once again the target of a drone attack" on Wednesday, said Chadian government spokesman Gassim Chérif Mahamat in a statement on Thursday.

"This latest extremely serious attack has caused the death of 17 of our compatriots and left several injured," the text states.

On Wednesday evening, a military source told AFP that an attack by an "FSR drone" from Sudan had caused the death of 16 people in Tiné.

The conflict in Sudan has pitted the paramilitaries of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) against the Sudanese army since April 2023.

The FSR denied on Thursday, via the social network Telegram, being behind the attack in Tiné, blaming the Sudanese army.

- Porous boundary -

The war in Sudan continues to spill over into Chad, whose government decided at the end of February to close its border after "repeated incursions" by armed groups involved in the conflict.

Chadian President Mahamat Idriss Déby convened a defense and security council on Wednesday night and ordered his army to "retaliate from tonight against any attack coming from Sudan," according to a post from the presidency on social media.

"Chad, which has shown exemplary solidarity since the beginning of the Sudanese crisis, must not become a breeding ground for the conflict," the United Nations representation in Chad condemned in a statement on Thursday.

A rocket launched from Sudan caused damage in late February in Tiné, where 15 soldiers and eight civilians had already lost their lives due to the conflict since late December, according to an AFP tally.

Darfur, a vast region in western Sudan bordering Chad, has been almost entirely controlled by the RSF paramilitaries since they seized the town of El Fasher in October. On February 21, they claimed to have captured the border town of Tina, the Sudanese twin of Tiné in Chad, from which it is separated only by the narrow bed of a mostly dry river.

Stretching nearly 1,400 kilometers and located in a desert region, the border between Chad and Sudan remains porous and difficult to control.

In Sudan, the civil war has killed tens of thousands of people and displaced more than 12 million, of whom nearly one million have sought refuge in Chad, according to the UN.