The Chad government has vowed to “obliterate” Boko Haram capabilities, following a deadly weekend attack by the jihadists on a military garrison.
The jihadists killed around 40 people and wounded dozens more during a Sunday raid on a base in the Lake Chad region, an area plagued by various armed groups.
In response, Chad on Monday launched Operation Haskanite, that “aims not only to secure our peaceful population” but also to “hunt down, root out and obliterate the nuisance capability of Boko Haram and its affiliates”, interim Prime Minister Abderahim Bireme Hamid told reporters in N’Djamena.
Foreign minister Abderaman Koulamallah also on Wednesday renewed the nation’s call on the international community to step up its support of counter-terrorism efforts in the region.
In a vast expanse of water and swamps, the Lake Chad region’s countless islets serve as hideouts for jihadist groups, such as Boko Haram and its offshoot Islamic State in West Africa (ISWAP), who carry out regular attacks on the country’s army and civilians.
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.
The government, as it did at the time, has declared three days of national mourning from Tuesday, with flags flying at half-mast and a ban on celebratory activities.
