Sudan drone strike kills 17 in Chad border town, Deby orders retaliation

A drone launched from war-torn Sudan has killed 17 people and wounded dozens more in the eastern Chadian border town of Tine, prompting President Mahamat Idriss Deby to convene an emergency security council meeting and order his military to retaliate immediately against any further attacks from Sudan.

The Chadian government confirmed the death toll on Thursday, saying the town of Tine had “again been the target of a drone attack” in what it described as an assault of “extreme gravity.” The incident occurred late Wednesday and represents the latest cross-border spillover from the war between Sudan’s military and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, which has raged since April 2023.

President Deby convened an emergency meeting of the defence and security council at the presidential palace in N’Djamena late on March 18, attended by the Prime Minister, senior government officials, top military commanders, and heads of security agencies. He ordered the armed forces to “maintain a state of maximum operational readiness and respond decisively to any further aggression originating from Sudan,” with the directive specifically applying to forces loyal to either Sudanese army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan or RSF commander Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo.

Deby also ordered the complete closure of Chad’s approximately 1,300-kilometre shared border with Sudan and announced that a government delegation would be deployed to the affected areas to assess both human and material losses.

The attack is part of a relentless pattern of cross-border violence. A rocket launched from Sudan had caused damage in Tine at the end of February, and at least 15 soldiers and eight civilians had already been killed in Tine as a result of the conflict since late December, according to an AFP tally. Chad had shut its border on February 23 in a move it said was aimed at preventing “any risk of the conflict spreading.”

The humanitarian picture in Tine is dire. Health authorities received 123 wounded people at a newly built hospital, of which 66 arrived in serious condition. Doctors Without Borders said its medical staff and Chadian health services were treating casualties in extremely difficult conditions, without water or electricity and relying on generators and solar panels, while medicine stockpiles were running critically low due to the surge of new patients.

The strategic significance of Tine makes the attacks all the more alarming. Tina, the Sudanese twin town of Tine separated only by a dry watercourse, is one of the last areas still held by the Sudanese military in the Darfur region, which has been almost entirely under RSF control since October 2025. The nearby border crossing has served as the sole route for cross-border humanitarian aid and deliveries from Chad when the Adré crossing is closed.

The wider drone war in Sudan has reached catastrophic proportions. In the first two months of 2026 alone, the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data project recorded 198 strikes by both sides, at least 52 of which caused civilian casualties, killing 478 people. Sudan accounted for more than half of all drone attacks recorded across the entire African continent in 2024. The conflict has killed more than 40,000 people according to UN figures, with aid groups warning the true toll could be far higher — making it one of the world’s most devastating ongoing humanitarian emergencies.