Chad on Tuesday urged the international community to step up support for counter-terrorism efforts in the Sahel, after Boko Haram jihadists killed around 40 Chadian troops in a surprise attack.
The jihadist group late on Sunday targeted a military garrison in the Lake Chad region, an area plagued by various armed groups, in an offensive that killed some 40 “brave Chadian soldiers”, the government said in a statement published by spokesman Abderaman Koulamallah on Tuesday.
Around 20 people were also wounded, military sources said.
“The government is calling on the international community to intensify its support and to reinforce assistance in counter-terrorism efforts in particular in the Sahel region and Lake Chad basin,” the statement said.
“Determined collective action is essential to eradicate this scourge which threatens the stability and the development of the entire region,” it added.
Chadian President Mahamat Idriss Deby Itno on Monday launched an operation to hunt down the attackers and “security forces are currently in full pursuit of the assailants”, the statement also read.
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France’s embassy in Chad said in a Facebook post on Tuesday that “France stands with Chad in the fight against terrorism” and offered its condolences to the authorities and the families of the slain troops.
Chad, an ally of France ruled by the son of Idriss Deby Itno who was president for over 30 years, is the last Sahel country to host French soldiers.
The landlocked nation is surrounded by the Central African Republic, Sudan, Libya and Niger, which all host Russian paramilitary forces from the Wagner group.
Although the current president has sought closer ties with Moscow in recent months, talks to strengthen economic cooperation with Russia have yet to bear concrete results.
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.
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