Chad’s military conducted air strikes that inflicted “many dead and wounded” against Boko Haram fighters, President Mahamat Idriss Deby Itno announced on Thursday.
“We carried out multiple air strikes on enemy positions that caused significant casualties,” Deby told reporters in the Lake Chad region, though he did not provide exact figures.
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Dressed in military fatigues, Deby stated that he had “personally” led the counteroffensive against Boko Haram, which had launched an attack on the Chadian army last month near the Nigerian border in western Chad.
Following the October assault, in which Boko Haram fighters killed around 40 people and injured many others at a military garrison, Chad’s government vowed to “obliterate” the group.
The operation, which began late last month, aims “not only to secure our peaceful population,” but also to “hunt down, dismantle, and neutralize Boko Haram’s capacity to cause harm,” interim Prime Minister Abderahim Bireme Hamid said last week.
In the challenging terrain of Lake Chad’s swamps and islands, Boko Haram and its offshoot Islamic State in West Africa (ISWAP) often use remote hideouts to stage attacks on military and civilian targets.
Since 2015, Chad has collaborated with Nigeria, Niger, and Cameroon as part of a multinational force of around 8,500 soldiers to combat the jihadists. Boko Haram’s insurgency, which began in Nigeria in 2009, has resulted in over 40,000 deaths and expanded to neighbouring regions.
In March 2020, Chad suffered one of its most devastating losses in the region when about 100 soldiers died in a Boko Haram raid on the Bohoma peninsula in Lake Chad.
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