At least 10 people have been killed in fresh fighting between nomadic herders and farmers in southern Chad, a local prosecutor said Sunday, with the most of the deaths happening during a funeral.

The herders claimed to have lost a cow and tracked it down to a farm, said Brahim Ali Kolla, prosecutor in Moundou, Chad's second-largest city and capital of the southwest province.

The herders sent a representative to reclaim the animal Thursday but he was killed and the farmers attacked the herdsmen at his funeral, he added.

Clashes between settled farmers and the nomadic Arab herders, many of them armed, are a worsening problem in the arid Sahel, where tensions over access to land are frequent.

Much of the violence occurs when herders, sometimes crossing the border from Sudan, drive their stock onto the field of a so-called sedentary farmer, trampling crops and sparking a confrontation between the two communities.

AFP