N'DJAMENA - Six French nationals detained in Chad on suspicion of trying to illegally fly 103 children to Europe started a hunger strike late on Friday, complaining their case was being neglected, a legal source said.

The six members of French humanitarian activist group Zoe's Ark were arrested in Chad on Oct. 25 as they tried to fly the children, aged 1-10, out of the central African country.

"They have been on hunger strike since last night," a legal source in the capital N'Djamena, who asked not to be named, told Reuters. He said they were refusing food but drinking water.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Chad's President Idriss Deby discussed the case on the sidelines of an EU-Africa summit in Portugal on Saturday and had a "common will to resolve the situation", a French presidency spokesman said.

The Chadian source said the group had begun the protest because they felt that no one was listening to their case, that they had been abandoned by the French government and that a Chadian official involved in the case had not been arrested.

He also said it had been decided that the trial of the six, who face charges of fraud and abduction and could be sentenced to forced labour terms if convicted, would be held in Chad and that it would start in the coming weeks.

Neither lawyers for the French nationals nor Chadian court officials were immediately available to comment.


MOTHERS REUNITED

Zoe's Ark had said it wanted to fly orphans from Sudan's war-torn Darfur region to Europe for fostering by families but U.N. officials who questioned the children said most were not orphans and came from villages on the Chad-Sudan border.

"When they collected these little children it was the future generation of Chad they were taking and that's not good," said Nodjihidi Beral, a Chadian volunteer aid worker looking after the children at an orphanage in the eastern town of Abeche.

"We want them to be judged here," he told Reuters.

Many of the mothers have come to Abeche from their villages and visit their children each day at the Bakane Assalam orphanage. Some spend their time playing with plastic animals sent as part of a donation from Dubai, others watch television or sing with aid workers as women prepare food for them.

"Even if (the mothers) ask for their children they know there is a legal process ... Judging a group which stole 103 children is not an easy process," said Habsita Bourma, deputy head of a local social centre helping to care for the infants.

The seven-member Spanish crew of the plane chartered by Zoe's Ark to transport the children, three French journalists and a Belgian pilot arrested with the group were later released after Sarkozy flew to Chad to discuss the case with Deby.

France has strongly condemned the Zoe's Ark operation but the case has strained relations with its former colony ahead of the planned deployment of a European Union peacekeeping force in the restive east, due in the coming weeks.