N'DJAMENA, Jan 15 (Reuters) - Chad protested to Sudan on Monday after it said Sudanese military aircraft flew over army positions in the violence-torn east and it accused Khartoum of continuing to back rebels in the remote region. Chadian Foreign Minister Ahmad Allam-Mi summoned the Sudanese ambassador to strongly protest at the flights to the east of the town of Adre, on the border with Sudan and more than 800 km (500 miles) from the capital N'Djamena. Chad accuses Khartoum of supporting rebels who are fighting a low intensity war in eastern Chad to oust President Idriss Deby. Sudan denies the claims. "The Sudanese air force began yesterday to fly over the positions of the Chadian army," Allam-Mi told Reuters. "I summoned the Sudanese ambassador in Chad this morning to raise a strong protest and I said that Chad would take all the necessary measures." The minister rejected accusations by Sudan that Chadian troops had invaded its territory, calling them propaganda. "This is a pretext to continue to attack our country. Sudan is reassembling and rearming its mercenaries, as the attack against Ounianga Kebir demonstrates," Allam-Mi added. The anti-Deby rebel Union of Forces for Democracy and Development (UFDD) occupied the remote northeastern town of Ounianga Kebir early on Saturday morning, in what appeared to be a hit-and-run raid typical of the long-running insurgency. Violence in the east of oil-producing Chad has been fuelled by instability and ethnic killings spreading across the border from the neighbouring Darfur region of Sudan, where a rebellion and related conflict has killed some 200,000 people since 2003. Deby, a former fighter pilot, seized power in a 1990 uprising in eastern Chad and was re-elected to a fresh term in May in elections boycotted by the opposition.
