DAKAR (AlertNet) - The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) suspended its field operations in eastern Chad on Tuesday after bandits kidnapped a French staff member.
The ICRC has 315 staff -- including 57 expatriates -- working in Chad and is one of the biggest aid operations in the country, particularly in the volatile east where government forces have clashed with rebels since 2006.
"We are not pulling out," Elisa Tamburini, the ICRC spokeswoman in eastern Chad, told AlertNet.
"Our suspension consists of having all our teams back in the main offices in eastern Chad -- that is Abeche and Goz Beida because we need to analyse the situation in order to define how we will continue to work."
Armed men attacked Laurent Maurice, an agronomist for the ICRC who was monitoring harvests and his five Chadian colleagues, on Monday night in the village of Kawa, in eastern Chad, about 20km from Sudan.
Last month, in a nearby area, the head of a Chadian refugee body was killed. The United Nations said after that murder that the area was extremely dangerous for aid groups.
"We have advised against humanitarian activities without security escorts in that area from Farchana up to Guereda along the Sudan border," said Michel Bonnardeaux the spokesman of the U.N. to the Central African Republic and Chad (MINURCAT).
But Bonnardeaux said the ICRC and other leading relief agencies did not use armed escorts because they wanted to retain as much neutrality as possible.
There have been over 50 armed attacks on humanitarian workers in eastern Chad this year -- most in this area.
Five workers for the French aid group Premiere Urgence were also kidnapped last month and only freed after the car they were travelling in with their abductors had an accident.
Two workers from the aid group Medecin Sans Frontieres (MSF Holland) were kidnapped in August after a robbery in their compound near the border with the Sudanese region of Darfur. They were later released.
"This points to a criminal gang operating in that area which needs to be investigated and tracked," Bonnardeaux said.
Although armed banditry has been a persistent security threat for aid workers in the area neighbouring the Darfur region of Sudan, relief groups believe it is not political. They say they are targeted because they have cars and other valuables which their assailants in this extremely poor area want.
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