DEFENCE Minister Willie O’Dea will meet military chiefs in Paris today ahead of theexpected deployment of Irish and international troops to Chad next week.

A decision in regard to the deployment of Irish troops to Chad will be taken on the basis of events over the coming 72 hours, according to the Defence Forces.

THE head of a French charity on trial with five colleagues in Chad yesterday denied kidnapping 103 children, saying he believed in good faith they were saving orphans from Darfur.

Soldiers and rebels have both claimed to have killed several hundred of their opponents in combat yesterday in eastern Chad in what may turn out to be the heaviest fighting since rebels tried to take the capital N’Djamena last year.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy condemned an attempt by a French group to spirit more than 100 children out of Chad on the grounds that they were orphans from Darfur in danger of being killed.

Authorities in Chad said today they were holding seven crew members of a plane contracted to fly more than 100 children out of the impoverished African country, as President Idriss Deby called an attempt by nine French citizens to take the children away to Europe “shocking” and promised punishment for anyone found to have been involved.

Soldiers have gathered along a strategic road in trucks mounted with machine guns as a rebel convoy was spotted heading towards the capital of Chad.

A United Nations aid worker was shot and wounded in eastern Chad after being pulled from her car in a volatile region near the Sudanese border, the agency said today.

THE UN refugee agency is facing a race against time to help more than 100,000 impoverished Sudanese refugees who have spilled across the border into Chad to escape increasing violence in their homeland.