Clashes erupted on May 23 in Kouri Bougoudi near the Libyan border, in northern Chad. It’s all gone “of a banal dispute between two individuals which degenerated”, said by telephone this Monday, May 30, General Daoud Yaya Brahim, Minister of Defense, who is on site with a large military contingent dispatched a few days after the tragedy.
The ensuing clashes between artisanal gold miners “a hundred dead and at least forty injured”, he continued.
The region, in the immense mountainous and desert massif that is difficult to access, Tibesti, is full of mines operated often clandestinely by a multitude of gold diggers come from all over the country and from neighboring states, Libya, Niger and Sudan, on a land and in a hostile climate that makes it difficult for the authorities to control the places.
Not the first time
On Wednesday, Communication Minister Abderaman Koulamallah said in a statement that these clashes, more than 1,000 km northeast of the capital N’Djamena, had ended in “Loss of human life and several injuries”, but without giving more details.
“This is not the first time that there have been clashes between gold miners in the region and we have decided to suspend all gold mining in Kouri until further notice, knowing that the vast majority are illegal”, said Daoud Yaya Brahim, saying the clashes were between people from Mauritania and Libya.
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