Chad: 40 soldiers killed in attack on military base
Chadian Soldier, Photo: Archive
October 28, 2024 Hour: 5:29 pm
At least 40 Chadian soldiers were killed during an assault Sunday night by unidentified assailants on a military base in Chad.
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President Mahamat Deby Itno visited the base in Barkaram, an island in the Lake Chad region, early in the morning and announced the launch of a military operation to track down the attackers, according to a statement from the presidency.
The perpetrators of the latest attack are not yet known, but the government has attributed previous attacks in the region to the militant group Boko Haram.
The attack struck at 10:00 pm local time (2100 GMT), local sources told AFP.
“Boko Haram members took control of the garrison, seized the weapons, burnt vehicles equipped with heavy arms, and left,” said one local source, who asked not to be named.
A vast expanse of water and swamps, Lake Chad’s countless islets serve as hideouts for jihadist groups, such as Boko Haram and its offshoot Islamic State in West Africa (ISWAP), who make regular attacks on the countries’ army and civilians.
In March, an attack that the government attributed to Boko Haram killed seven soldiers, rekindling fears of violence in the Lake Chad area, after a period of peace following a successful operation launched in 2020 by the Chadian army to destroy the extremist group’s bases there. Schools, mosques and churches have reopened and humanitarian organizations have returned.
Boko Haram launched an insurgency in Nigeria in 2009, leaving more than 40,000 people dead and displacing two million, and the organisation has since spread to neighbouring countries.
In March 2020, the Chadian army suffered its biggest ever one-day losses in the region, when around 100 troops died in a raid on the lake’s Bohoma peninsula.
Autor: OSG
Fuente: EFE-Africanews
