Chad 'hands over 84 child soldiers' to UNICEF

The children were among 236 prisoners of war captured as government troops repelled rebels who had entered eastern Chad from Sudan, said Defense Minister General Kamougue Wadal Abdelkader, AFP reported.

The handover took place at a ceremony attended by Alpha Oumar Konare, former president of Mali and a past president of the African Union, and Foreign Minister Moussa Faki Mahamat.

The children will be looked after at a center in the capital Ndjamena, said Dimitri Papathanassiou, UNICEF's representative in Chad.

Both UNICEF and the Chadian authorities will do everything they can to find the children's families and their communities so they can return to their previous life, said Mahamat.

On May 4, the rebel Union of Forces of Resistance (UFR) launched an offensive from the Sudanese side of Chad's eastern border with the declared intention of capturing Ndjamena and ousting President Idriss Deby Itno.

But by the end of the week, the Chadian army said it had pushed back the rebels, after two days of fierce fighting in which Ndjamena says 247 people were killed, all but 22 of them rebels.