Chad’s jihadist incursion that took place on Tuesday comes a week after a visit by the transitional president, Mahamat Idriss Deby Itno.
Chadian soldiers were killed on Tuesday by jihadists who attacked an army post in the west of the country, the presidential spokesman said in a statement seen by APA.
Brah Mahamat said that the attack left ten dead and wounded, in the early morning near Ngouboua.
The journalist Wassin Nasr, a specialist in jihadist issues, has drawn up, according to his sources, a toll of at least “35 soldiers, including the commander of the base, killed and a very large number of injured.”
The attack was carried out in the Lake Chad region, bordering Chad, Niger, Cameroon and Nigeria, where the jihadist groups Boko Haram and its splinter group Islamic State in West Africa (ISWAP) regularly attack armies and civilians in the four countries.
“This umpteenth surprise attack confirms the even more active presence of the Boko Haram nebula in the Lake Chad basin,” the presidential spokesman insisted.
The defence force unit, the target of the attack, had been dispatched as a precursor to set up an army outpost on the island of Bouka-Toullorom between Ngouboua and Kaïga, said Brah Mahamat. “The jihadists began the attack during the night until dawn,” the France24 journalist added.
This incident against the Chadian army comes only a few days after a visit by General Mahamat Idriss Deby Itno to the locality, in order to “galvanise the troops and reorganise the security apparatus,” said the Presidency.
The President of the Transition, Mahamat Idriss Déby Itno, called on the international community “to take the full measure of this real threat and to act accordingly”.
DS/ac/lb/abj/APA