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Sorry - this page has been removed. Boko Haram militants launch first fatal attack in Chad
(4 months later)
This could be because it launched early, our rights have expired, there was a legal issue, or for another reason. Boko Haram fighters have carried out their first known fatal attack in Chad, killing several people including a local chief, according to residents and security forces.
Dozens of militants arrived by motorised canoe at a fishing village on the shores of Lake Chad early on Friday morning, setting houses ablaze and attacking a police station.
For further information, please contact: “They came on board three pirogues and succeeded in killing about 10 people before being pushed back by the army,” said a resident of the village of Ngouboua, about 12 miles east of the Nigerian border, to which thousands of Nigerian refugees had fled in early January after an attack on the town of Baga.
Militants from the Sunni jihadi group, based in northern Nigeria less than 60 miles from the Chadian capital, have stepped up cross-border attacks in recent weeks in their campaign to carve out an Islamist emirate around the Lake Chad area which borders Nigeria, Chad, Cameroon and Niger. Security sources have warned of sleeper cells nestled in Lake Chad, a vast maze of tiny islands and swamp.
A spokesman for the armed forces said five Chadians were killed on Friday, including the local chief Mai Kolle, a police officer and three civilians. “We sent in our air force and they neutralised the three pirogues. We are still combing the area,” he said.
Residents fled the village and a Chadian humanitarian vehicle was attacked as it tried to escape, a UN refugee agency spokesman told reporters in Geneva.
In Niger, thousands fled the border town of Diffa this week after a wave of raids and suicide attacks. Boko Haram insurgents, including a suspected female suicide bomber, also attacked one town and two villages in Nigeria’s Borno state on Thursday, killing at least 31 people, according to security, hospital sources and witnesses.
Nigeria has postponed for six weeks a presidential election that had been due on Saturday, citing the security threat from Boko Haram.
Chad’s army, one of the best in the region, has joined a regional offensive against Boko Haram and says it has killed hundreds of fighters in the past fortnight.
In an attempt to contain Boko Haram, which has killed thousands and kidnapped hundreds in its five-year revolt, President Idriss Deby’s government mediated peace talks between the Nigerian government and the group last October.
The negotiations sought to secure the release of 200 schoolgirls from Nigeria’s Chibok, but Boko Haram later said it had married off the schoolgirls to its fighters.
Chad is also the base for a French regional counter-insurgency operation Barkhane, which provides intelligence and logistical support to the Chadian army.