Chad gunmen kidnap French Red Cross worker: ICRC

The Red Cross said Tuesday that several armed men had abducted a French staff member in eastern Chad, close to the border with Sudan and its war-ravaged Darfur region.

Laurent Maurice, an agronomist, was snatched at around 9:00 pm (2000 GMT) on Monday, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said in a statement.

He had been "in the area to evaluate the most recent harvest," the ICRC said.

Maurice was spending the night with five Chadian colleagues in the village of Kawa, about 20 kilometres (12 miles) from the border with Sudan, when he was kidnapped.

"The ICRC currently has no indication of who the abductors might be or of their motives. It is in contact with the authorities and other parties with the aim of resolving the situation as swiftly as possible," it added.

The aid agency called for the "rapid and unconditional release of its kidnapped staff member" and said it had temporarily suspended its activities in eastern Chad.

The French foreign ministry requested Maurice's "release as soon as possible," saying it did not have many details but was "in the process of trying to collect information."

Besides supporting a health centre in the village of Kawa, the ICRC runs other programmes in eastern Chad, including offering aid to those displaced by internal conflict, as well as visiting detainees in prisons.

Aid agencies have reported several attacks in the region in the past year, with bandits often blamed for the violence.

Chadian General Oki Daggache, who heads coordination with an international force in eastern Chad, on Tuesday criticised non-governmental organisations like the ICRC and Medecins sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders - MSF) for refusing escorts.

"The humanitarian workers of the ICRC and MSF cause us too many problems. They refuse to be escorted by MINURCAT (the UN Mission in Chad and the Central African Republic) and even by members of the integrated security detachment," Daggache said.

"What's worse, they don't tell local authorities about their movements on the ground and so they become very difficult to manage," he added.

ICRC spokeswoman Anna Schaaf would not comment directly on Daggache's criticisms, but explained that as standard operating procedure, "we don't work with armed escorts, in order to keep our neutrality."

"That's how we work all over the world. We cannot accept armed escorts in an armed conflict if we want to stay neutral."

She added that before carrying out any mission, the ICRC informs "all parties in the conflict and we get security guarantees."

She said that the aid agency had already been subjected to minor incidents but nothing on the scale of Monday's kidnapping.

A Greek employee of MSF was kidnapped in eastern Chad in August. He was released a month later.

In March, British charity Oxfam estimated that 25 attacks occur every month on non-governmental organisations operating in eastern Chad.

The arid region is home to an estimated 450,000 refugees and displaced people, including from Sudan and the Central African Republic, putting a great strain on scarce food resources and firewood.

It is also beset by violence spilling over from the neighbouring Darfur region of Sudan, where a brutal crackdown in recent years has killed 300,000 people and displaced millions more, according to the United Nations.

Chadian rebels use Darfur as a base for cross-border attacks, while the Chad and Sudanese armies have clashed after each country accused the other of harbouring and providing support to rebel groups.