The UN refugee agency and the World Food Programme on Monday appealed for the rapid restoration of order in volatile eastern Chad following weekend unrest in which mobs looted warehouses storing vital aid supplies for hundreds of thousands of Darfurian refugees and Chadians.


Both agencies reported that their main warehouses in the eastern Chad town of Abeche, the hub for relief efforts for 218,000 refugees from Sudan's neighbouring Darfur region and some 90,000 internally displaced Chadians, had been pillaged, reportedly by local residents, during the turmoil on Saturday and Sunday. Abeche was occupied by rebel forces on Saturday, then re-taken by government troops on Sunday.