Eight Chadian soldiers killed in landmine laid by rebels

Not less than eight soldiers lost their lives in Western Chad and more than a dozen wounded when their vehicle struck a landmine laid by suspected jihadists.

According to security sources and local officials the incident occurred on Wednesday July 8, 2020, at Kalam, five kilometers from the Nigerian border in the Lake Chad region, an area that continuously witnesses series of attack from the jihadists.

The number of deaths from the blasts was put at eight or nine and the wounded to be between eleven or twelve. Among those dead was a commander in the gendarmerie, according to a military source.

A security source in Nigeria has said that the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) is perhaps behind the attack. The source also said the number of deaths is around eleven.
Speaking about the attack, a Chadian officer on Thursday said,

“Despite the victory inflicted on Boko Haram after Bohoma, we know that Boko Haram can always bounce back quickly, and we already had intelligence that they were present in the area.”

Founder of Citizens’ Movement for the Preservation of Freedoms (MCPL), a Chadian grassroots group, Jean Bosco Manga, said the latest strike was a call to ensure tight and much stronger cross-border corporation.

While noting this he said, “This upturn in violence stems from the fact that you cannot claim to defeat an organised sect whose tentacles are in neighbouring countries.”

Boko Haram, an insurgency in the northeastern Nigeria, was launched in 2009 and since then about 36,000 lives have been lost with over two million people displaced.