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Chad said its citizens were being maliciously blamed for the CAR violence. Chad’s foreign ministry said in a statement on Thursday that it planned to withdraw its troops from an African Union peacekeeping mission in the Central African Republic, CAR. Chadian soldiers have been at the heart of African efforts to stabilise CAR but its forces have been accused of siding with the mainly Muslim Seleka rebels whose seizure of power last year sparked tit-for-tat violence with Christian militia.

A largely semi-desert country, Chad is rich in gold and uranium and stands to benefit from its recently-acquired status as an oil-exporting state. However, Africa's fifth-largest nation suffers from inadequate infrastructure and internal conflict. Poverty is rife, and health and social conditions compare unfavourably with those elsewhere in the region. Chad's post-independence history has been marked by instability and violence stemming mostly from tension between the mainly Arab-Muslim north and the predominantly Christian and animist south. In 1969 Muslim dissatisfaction with the first president, Ngarta Tombalbaye - a Christian southerner - developed into a guerrilla war. This, combined with a severe drought, undermined his rule and in 1975 President Tombalbaye was killed in a coup led by another southerner, Felix Malloum. At a glance *.Politics: Crises on several fronts: President Deby, in power since 1990, faces an armed rebellion by several groups and incursions from ...