By Stephanie Hancock ABECHE, Chad, Nov 27 (Reuters) - The latest fighting in east Chad has disrupted humanitarian operations and raised the risks for a European peacekeeping force due to deploy there soon to protect civilians, aid officials and diplomats said on Tuesday. In the biggest clash for months between Chad's government army and eastern rebels, the army said on Monday it had killed hundreds of insurgents during fierce gunbattles near the border with Sudan's conflict-torn Darfur region. Rebel commanders put army losses at 200 killed, but there was no independent confirmation of casualties. The clashes took place after two Chadian rebel groups ended a month-long ceasefire at the weekend, breaking a fragile calm which had followed the signing of a Libyan-brokered peace deal between President Idriss Deby and his main rebel foes. Foreign diplomats said the Sirte peace deal had appeared shaky from the outset and the latest violence highlighted the dangers for up to 3,700 European Union peacekeepers who are due to start arriving in eastern Chad early in the New Year. "This is a forewarning -- it's a very bad situation because nobody from the EU is going to feel confident now that there has been heavy fighting," one Chad-based foreign diplomat, who asked not to be named, told Reuters. Deployment of the EU force for eastern Chad, initially scheduled to start in November, has been delayed as its backers scramble to find a full complement of troops among EU members and seek commitments of aircraft and medical support units. Relief workers in the region have been clamouring for more than a year for international protection for more than 400,000 Sudanese and Chadian civilian refugees who have been forced from their homes because of violence in Darfur and in eastern Chad. "We'd like the protection right now, but we will have to live with (the situation) until they come, and hopefully by then things will be calmer," Annette Rehrl, spokeswoman in Chad for the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR, told Reuters in Abeche. She said the fighting over the last few days had bottled up more than 100 aid workers in the area around Forchana, where UNHCR runs two refugee camps not far from the Sudanese border. SITUATION VOLATILE Rehrl said the UNHCR could evacuate some workers from the region if the security situation deteriorated further. "In eastern Chad things can change every hour -- an evacuation is a very big operation so we hope that we won't be forced to evacuate and that things will calm down. But if things get worse, then they (the workers) will be evacuated," she said. In a statement on national television late on Monday, the Chadian army said it had attacked a column of rebels at Abou Goulem, some 60 km (38 miles) from the Darfur border, as they advanced towards the larger Chadian town of Abeche. It said its troops destroyed 40 rebel vehicles and seized 50 more, killing several hundred insurgents and taking prisoners. One of Chad's two main rebel groups, the Union of Forces for Democracy and Development (UFDD), said its forces had come under attack, fought back and made a strategic withdrawal. The UFDD and a second rebel group, the Assembly of Forces for Change (RFC), said on Friday they would break a ceasefire as of Sunday. They accused the government of not honouring commitments in the month-old peace deal to mutually agree on mechanisms to integrate the rebels into the national army. Chad's government said it held Sudan responsible for the latest fighting, accusing Khartoum's forces of failing in their obligation to prevent rebel raids across the border. Chad and Sudan have often accused each other of supporting rival armed rebel factions, particularly during the past two years of rebellion in Chad's east against Deby's 17-year rule. (Writing by Pascal Fletcher, editing by Nick Tattersall and Mary Gabriel)
