At least 92
soldiers from Chad have been killed in the deadliest-ever attack by the Boko
Haram armed group on the country's military forces, President Idriss Deby said
on Tuesday.
"We lost
92 of our soldiers, non-commissioned officers and officers," the president
said of the attack overnight on Sunday in Boma.
"It’s the
first time we have lost so many men," he added, after visiting the site of
the incident in Lac province, which borders Niger and Nigeria.
The attack on
soldiers on the Boma peninsula lasted at least seven hours and reinforcements
sent to help out were also hit, one soldier told AFP news agency.
He said 24 army
vehicles were destroyed, including armoured vehicles and Boko Haram carried off
weapons stolen from the military in speedboats.
"The enemy
has hit at our defences hard in this zone," a senior officer said.
The attack is
part of an expanding armed campaign in the vast, marshy Lake Chad area, where
the borders of Cameroon, Chad, Niger and Nigeria converge.
Boko Haram
launched an armed campaign in Nigeria in 2009 before beginning incursions in
its eastern neighbours.
Earlier on
Tuesday, Nigeria's military reported that scores of Nigerian soldiers were also
killed in the northeastern state of Borno near the border with Chad.
.
The attackers
used rocket-propelled grenades and other heavy weaponry in the attack on the
village of Gorge on Monday evening.
It was not
immediately clear who the attackers were, but fighters from Boko Haram and the
ISIL (ISIS) West Africa Province groups are active in the region.
Boko Haram has
stepped up its attacks in recent months on the islands of the Lake Chad Basin.
Since 2015,
countries in the area have cooperated in the Multinational Joint Force, a
regional coalition engaged around Lake Chad with the help of local residents
formed into vigilante groups.
Boko Haram's
decade-long armed campaign has so far killed 36,000 people and displaced nearly
two million in northeastern Nigeria, according to the United Nations.
Source:
Aljazeera- 25 MARCH 2020
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