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By Moumine Ngarmbassa

N'DJAMENA, May 1 (Reuters) - Gunmen in eastern Chad killed a French aid worker with Save The Children UK on Thursday after halting the convoy of vehicles in which he was travelling near the Sudan border, the British charity said.

Pascal Marlinge, 49, was one of a group of aid workers moving in a three-car convoy between the villages of Forchana and Hadjer Hadid in Chad's eastern borderlands, where several hundred thousand refugees are sheltering in U.N.-run camps.

Hijacking of aid vehicles is common in east Chad, which has been racked by violence in recent years that has included rebel offensives, inter-ethnic clashes and attacks by raiders coming over the border from Sudan's war-torn Darfur region.

But killings of foreign humanitarian workers, several hundred of whom work in Chad, are rare.

"Our information is that at about 10.15 am local time the convoy was stopped by a group of armed men. A shot, or shots, were fired and Mr Marlinge was killed. The four other humanitarian workers were unhurt," Save The Children UK said.

"All Save the Children UK work in Chad has been suspended until further notice," it added in a statement. Marlinge had a wife and teenage daughter living in France, it said.

France, which has troops stationed in Chad and has helped Chadian President Idriss Deby beat back offensives from the east by anti-government rebels, denounced the killing as barbaric.

"I have been informed that Pascal Marlinge, a French citizen working for a humanitarian organisation, has been savagely killed while working for displaced people and refugees in the area of Forchana, in eastern Chad," French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said in a statement.

"This is an act of base barbarism," Kouchner said.

The identity of Marlinge's killers was not immediately known, nor why he was shot.

VEHICLE HIJACKINGS

A U.N. source in east Chad, who asked not to be named, said the convoy including the Save The Children vehicle was travelling without a Chadian military escort.

"The information I have is that they were stopped by two armed men who made them get out of their vehicles and took the car keys. They were standing with their hands up when one of the gunmen went up to Pascal and shot him in the head," the source told Reuters.

The body of the slain aid worker was being flown by helicopter to the eastern town of Abeche, from where it would be flown by plane to the capital N'Djamena.

Dozens of vehicles used by foreign humanitarian groups have been hijacked in eastern Chad over the last two years.

In May 2006, a Spanish woman working for the U.N. Children's Fund (UNICEF) was shot and wounded in Abeche by an armed man who stole her U.N. jeep. In June last year, a French aid worker belonging to French medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) was killed by rebels in the north of Central African Republic, which borders Chad to the south.

The European Union (EU) has deployed more than 2,000 troops in eastern Chad and northeast Central African Republic to help protect around half a million Sudanese and Chadian refugees and civilians who are being looked after by foreign aid workers.

(For more information on humanitarian crises and issues visit www.alertnet.org) (For full Reuters Africa coverage and to have your say on the top issues, visit: http://africa.reuters.com/) (Additional reporting by Pascal Lietout in Paris and Pascal Fletcher in Dakar; Writing by Alistair Thomson and Pascal Fletcher; Editing by Jon Boyle)

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