UK aid agency Oxfam has warned a new humanitarian catastrophe, like that in Darfur, could happen in Chad if ethnic conflict is not brought under control.

Inter-ethnic fighting along the border with Darfur has displaced tens of thousands of Chadians in the past year.

This followed attacks on villages, with many burned to the ground.

Oxfam's comments come as the United Nations Security Council prepares to consider whether to send a peacekeeping force into eastern Chad.

Attacks on civilians in eastern Chad have been steadily increasing, but the scale of the violence has now reached such levels that comparisons with neighbouring Darfur are inevitable.

More than 120,000 Chadians have so far been forced from their homes in brutal inter-ethnic attacks that bear all the hallmarks of the violence seen across the border in Sudan.

Oxfam says that eastern Chad must not be allowed to become what it calls another Darfur.

Chad's border with Sudan is already home to thousands of Sudanese refugees and together with the newly displaced Chadians almost half a million civilians there are now completely reliant on outside help.

The UN Security Council is preparing to decide whether to send a peacekeeping force to Chad.

Chad's President, Idriss Deby, is broadly in favour of a force, and the UN has realised that peacekeeping troops may be the only way to prevent another Darfur from developing.

PHOTO CAPTION

Soldiers from Chad's National Army man a tank in Adre, bordering Sudan's Darfur region, February 5, 2007. (REUTERS)

BBC