Chad’s military inflicted “many dead and wounded” in air strikes against Boko Haram Terrorists, President Mahamat Idriss Deby Itno stated on Thursday.
“We conducted several air strikes on enemy positions, resulting in many dead and wounded,” Deby told reporters in the Lake Chad region, without providing specific numbers.
Dressed in full military attire, Deby said he had “personally” led the counter-attack against Boko Haram, following their attack on the Chadian army last month in the western region near the Nigerian border.
The Chadian government had vowed to “annihilate” Boko Haram when launching its operation in late October after the jihadists killed around 40 people and injured dozens more in a raid on a military garrison.
The operation “aims not only to protect our peaceful citizens” but also to “track down, eliminate, and destroy Boko Haram’s and its affiliates’ capacity to inflict harm,” interim Prime Minister Abderahim Bireme Hamid told reporters last week.
In the vast area of water and swamps, the Lake Chad region’s numerous islets serve as hideouts for jihadist groups like Boko Haram and its offshoot, Islamic State in West Africa (ISWAP), which regularly carry out attacks on Chad’s army and civilians.
In 2015, Chad and its neighbours—Nigeria, Niger, and Cameroon—established a multinational force of around 8,500 troops in the area to combat the jihadists.
Boko Haram launched its insurgency in Nigeria in 2009, which has resulted in more than 40,000 deaths, and the group has since spread to neighbouring countries.
In March 2020, Chad’s army suffered its heaviest single-day losses in the region, when approximately 100 soldiers were killed in a raid on the lake’s Bohoma peninsula.