'Apocalyptic scene' after Chad raid

Reports from eastern Chad suggest the violence is going from bad to worse. The UN refugee agency's Matthew Conway has just returned from the villages of Tiero and Marena where there was a brutal raid on 31 March 2007. He told the BBC News website what he saw.

It was shocking, apocalyptic - a scene of utter desolation and destruction.

It happened at first light so the villagers were caught totally unawares

Attacks like this happen repeatedly, but the scale of this one and the ferocity of it was startling - even to those of us who have been here for some time.

These were fairly large villages and clearly relatively prosperous: rich agricultural fields; neatly assembled houses and they were more or less completely destroyed in these attacks.

Hundreds upon hundreds of homes had been burned to the ground, and a small fire was still burning in one section of Tiero village.

An overwhelming stench came from the rotting carcasses of domestic animals such as donkeys, goats and chickens that had been hit by stray bullets, consumed by fire or died of thirst, as the owners had no time to untie them.

Two-pronged attack

All the villagers had fled - there was no-one left except a few people who started to come back to try to salvage whatever belongings survived the fires that were set to the villages.

Some had located the bodies of dead family and friends and were struggling to bury them with some very basic tools.

In fact we came across the bodies of an elderly man of 70 and the other a 30-year-old father of eight who had been shot dead about 1km from their village.

It's hard to know what the circumstances were but given eyewitness testimony, they were most likely running for their lives and chased down by the attackers.

Evidence collected so far indicates it was a two-pronged attack - very well co-ordinated and premeditated.

It happened at first light so the villagers were caught totally unawares. Some of the men would have been at mosque for morning prayers.

From one direction came the so-called Janjaweed militia on horseback and camelback - whether these were Janjaweed from Sudan or Chad, it is hard to know.

It appears that they consisted of a mix of various ethnicities, not solely Arab, and in some cases the assailants were known to the villagers.

The other prong of the attack appears to have been led by an unknown faction of Chadian rebels.

They were wearing military uniforms, were very well armed and arrived in vehicles.

Common graves

Given that many essential household goods, food and domestic animals were left behind, the residents had little time to flee.

Owners had no time to untie their livestock

Sadly, I don't think we're ever going to know the exact number of those who died as people fled in different directions.

Estimates now put the death toll at between 200 to 400.

A lot of bodies were buried in common graves simply as a necessity because of decomposition occurring in the intense heat.

These communal graves are scattered in all different directions mainly along the roadside where people were killed and then buried by their kin who were able to get back there.

Many who survived the initial attack, died in subsequent days from exhaustion and dehydration.

Along the route to the villages abandoned belongings can be seen of those who collapsed.

People displaced by other raids had been living in the villages alongside local residents. Tiero had a combined population of 4,000 and Marena of about 3,500.

It appears that the majority of the villagers have gone to the displacement site of Habile (about 45km west of Marena and Tiero).