(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-03-06 09:53

KHARTOUM, Sudan -- The Sudanese military confirmed Wednesday that it had found the body of a French soldier killed on the border of Sudan and Chad.

France said a day earlier that the soldier went missing after he and another member of its special forces were shot at by Sudanese troops after the two strayed over the Sudanese border from Chad. The two were part of a European peacekeeping force known as EUFOR deployed in Chad and the neighboring Central African Republic to protect uprooted people and aid workers on the borders of Darfur.

The Sudanese Foreign Ministry said that the French Foreign Ministry had apologized for the incident and requested help in finding the body.

"After the apology and upon request of the French government, our forces engaged in a search and found the body of the soldier ... inside Sudanese national territory," army spokesman Brig. Gen. Osman Mohamed al-Aghbash said in a written statement carried by Sudan's official news agency.

The remains were being transported to the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, and were to be turned over to French authorities, the statement said.

Al-Aghbash added that four civilians trying to carry the body were killed when one of his grenades detonated.

A Paris-based spokesman for the EUFOR mission, Lt. Col. Philippe de Cussac, said he could not confirm the body was that of the missing French soldier.

"Until we have done our official and formal identification, I cannot confirm anything," he said in a telephone interview Wednesday.

He said a plane was waiting in the Chadian capital, N'Djamena, to dispatch people who knew the missing soldier to Khartoum to identify the body. The plane would likely leave for the Sudanese capital on Thursday morning, de Cussac said.