Following a devastating weekend attack by Boko Haram on a military garrison, the Chadian government promised on Wednesday to “obliterate” the group’s capabilities.
During a Sunday raid on a facility in the Lake Chad region, where several armed groups operate, the jihadists murdered approximately 40 individuals and injured scores more.
Chad responded by launching Operation Haskanite on Monday, which “aims not only to secure our peaceful population” but also to “hunt down, root out, and obliterate the nuisance capability of Boko Haram and its affiliates,” interim Prime Minister Abderahim Bireme Hamid told reporters in N’Djamena.
Foreign Minister Abderaman Koulamallah also repeated the country’s request on the international community to increase its support for counter-terrorism measures in the region.
The Lake Chad region’s islets provide safe havens for jihadist groups like Boko Haram and Islamic State in West Africa (ISWAP), who frequently target the country’s troops and civilians.
In 2009, Boko Haram initiated an insurgency in Nigeria, killing over 40,000 and displacing two million people. Since then, the organization has extended to neighboring nations.
In March 2020, the Chadian army suffered its largest one-day defeat in the region, with over 100 men killed in an attack on the lake’s Bohoma peninsula.
The government, like it did at the time, has proclaimed three days of national mourning beginning Tuesday, with flags flying at half-mast and no celebrations permitted.