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On Thursday, President Mahamat Idriss Deby Itno revealed that Chad’s military had dealt a heavy blow to Boko Haram, with scores dead and wounded following targeted airstrikes.
Deby, appearing in military fatigues, confirmed that he had taken direct command of the counter-offensive, which was launched after Boko Haram militants attacked Chadian forces near the western border with Nigeria last month.
“We carried out several air strikes on enemy positions that resulted in many dead and wounded,” Deby told reporters in the Lake Chad region, without giving specific numbers.
President Mahamat Idriss Deby Itno declared on Thursday that Chad’s military had delivered a heavy blow to Boko Haram jihadists in air strikes, inflicting “many dead and wounded” in retaliation for last month’s attack on a Chadian military post near Nigeria. The strikes were part of a broader campaign launched by the government after Boko Haram’s deadly raid on the garrison.
The government of Chad vowed in late October to fully dismantle Boko Haram’s presence after the jihadists killed about 40 soldiers and injured dozens more in an ambush on a military garrison.
Read also: Chad Commits To Annihilating Boko Haram’s Influence
Speaking to the press, interim Prime Minister Abderahim Bireme Hamid emphasized that the ongoing operation is not only to protect civilians but also to end Boko Haram’s capacity to launch future attacks, particularly in the volatile border regions with Nigeria.
The operation “aims not only to secure our peaceful population” but also to “hunt down, root out and obliterate the capability of Boko Haram and its affiliates to cause harm”, interim Prime Minister Abderahim Bireme Hamid told reporters last week.
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.
Chad and its neighbours Nigeria, Niger and Cameroon set up a multinational force of some 8,500 soldiers in the area in 2015 to tackle the jihadists.
Boko Haram launched an insurgency in Nigeria in 2009, leaving more than 40,000 people dead, 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.
