Chad’s military has been accused of killing “scores” of fishers in Nigeria while targeting jihadists, days after 40 died in a Boko Haram attack on a military base in Chad, fishers and anti-jihadist militia told reporters on Thursday.
The Chadian army launched an airstrike pummelling Tilma island in Kukawa district on the Nigerian side of Lake Chad on Wednesday while fishers were tending to their catch, the sources said.
Two anti-jihadist militia assisting Nigerian soldiers in fighting the militant groups in the region told reporters that several fishers were killed in the bombardment.
“There was an attack on fishermen by a [fighter] jet belonging to the Chadian military in Tilma island which killed scores of fishermen,” said Babakura Kolo, an anti-jihadist militia leader. “The jet mistook the fishermen for Boko Haram terrorists who attacked a military base inside Chad on Sunday.”
Requesting anonymity, a Chadian general staff officer told reporters that strikes “were carried out on islands located on the borders of Nigeria and Niger.”
“Boko Haram fighters often blend in with the fishermen and farmers whenever they commit their crimes. It is therefore difficult to distinguish between the population and the terrorists,” he said.
Besides killing about 40 people, Boko Haram’s Sunday raid on a base in the Lake Chad region also left dozens wounded, with the group claiming responsibility for the attack in a video released on Monday.
Chadian President Mahamat Idriss Deby, who visited the military base after the jihadist attack, has vowed to “pursue and track down the attackers to their last entrenchment,” a Chadian military statement said.
Most of the fishers caught up in the aerial attack were from the towns of Baga, Doron-Baga and Duguri on the shores of Lake Chad, said Ibrahim Liman, another anti-jihadist militia.
“The fighter jet encircled Tilma before beginning to drop bombs while people run in all directions for cover,” said fisherman Sallau Arzika.
Arzika escaped the airstrike and made it back to the garrison town of Monguno.
“A large number of fishermen were killed. No one can give an exact number because bodies are still scattered across Tilma,” he said.
Some of the dead bodies and the injured were taken to a military base in Mile 4, near Baga, Arzika added.
Fisherman Labo Sani from Doron-Baga told reporters that two of his friends were killed in the airstrike, while a third was critically injured.
“We were carrying out our fishing and it never crossed our mind that we would be attacked and killed by a fighter jet,” Sani said.
Chad’s assault launched Monday, dubbed Operation Haskanite, “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 Chadian Prime Minister Abderahim Bireme Hamid told reporters in N’Djamena.
The operation is being “personally” directed by Deby on the ground, the presidency wrote on social media on Thursday.
The president was “holding multiple meetings with troops, instructing and directing them” to leave Boko Haram “no chance”, it added.
Chadian Foreign Minister Abderaman Koulamallah on Wednesday called on the international community to step up its support of counterterrorism efforts in the region.
In a vast expanse of water and swamps, the Lake Chad region’s countless islets serve as hideouts for jihadist groups, such as Boko Haram and its offshoot Islamic State in West Africa, who carry out regular attacks on the country’s army and civilians.
Boko Haram in 2009 launched an insurgency in Nigeria, leaving more than 40,000 people dead and displacing two million, and the organization has since spread to neighboring countries.
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