Two suicide bombings in Chad target police in capital

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/15/two-suicide-bombings-chad-target-police-ndjamena

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Two suicide bombers have blown themselves up in attacks targeting police in the capital of Chad, a country on the frontline of the fight against the Islamist terror group Boko Haram.

The government convened an emergency meeting following the simultaneous bombings on Monday outside the police headquarters and police academy in N’Djamena, an official said.

They were the first such attacks in the capital of the north-central African nation, where security has been reinforced since Chad joined the fight against Boko Haram earlier this year.

An official with N’Djamena’s police force told AFP that many people were killed and wounded in the attacks although there was no precise toll. There was also no immediate claim of responsibility for the bombings, which happened as police cadets were attending a training course at the academy.

Large numbers of Chad’s security forces were seen taking up positions on the streets of the capital after the attacks.

President Idriss Déby was expected to return home during the day from an African Union summit in Johannesburg, an official said.

The former French colony is part of a four-nation coalition along with Nigeria, Cameroon and Niger that was created to tackle the Boko Haram insurgency as the group steps up cross-border attacks.

Related: Boko Haram - the Guardian briefing

Abubakar Shekau, the leader of Boko Haram, has on several occasions threatened to attack Chad and other countries in the coalition.

Paris condemned Monday’s blasts, with a foreign ministry spokesman saying France “stands alongside Chad and its partners in the fight against terrorism”. Chad is also a close ally of France in its counter-terrorism Operation Barkhane in five countries in the Sahel region, and the French army has set up its headquarters for the campaign in N’Djamena.

Last week Abuja hosted a summit at which Nigeria and fellow coalition members plus Benin agreed that an 8,700-strong regional force would replace the current four-nation grouping. The long-awaited multi-national joint taskforce, which was due to have been operational in November, has its headquarters in N’Djamena, under a senior Nigerian officer.

Boko Haram has been waging a six-year campaign of violence in north-eastern Nigeria that has left at least 15,000 people dead. Chad’s involvement in the fight against the group began in January when Déby sent troops to assist Cameroon, whose far-northern region was coming under attack from the rebels.

More than 70 Chadian soldiers have died in operations against Boko Haram, including attacks around Lake Chad where the borders of Nigeria, Chad, Cameroon and Niger meet.

Nigeria’s new president, Muhammadu Buhari, who has vowed to make crushing the group the priority of his rule, visited Chad earlier this month to build up the regional coalition against the Islamists.

“Boko Haram declared that they are in alliance with Isis [Islamic State], so terrorism has gone international. They are in Mali, they are in Nigeria, they are in Syria, they are in Iraq, they are in Yemen,” he told AFP at the summit in South Africa on Monday. “It’s an international problem now,” he said.

Boko Haram, whose name roughly translates as “western education is forbidden”, aims to create an Islamic caliphate in the territories it controls and in March declared allegiance to Islamic State.

Some of the 1.5 million people made homeless by the violence have fled to Chad, a poor, landlocked country.