ABUJA, Federal Republic of Nigeria. Chad said on Thursday its warplanes bombed Boko Haram positions in Nigeria to avenge twin suicide bombings in the capital this week.
Chad’s military vowed it would continue its ‘merciless’ pursuit of the Islamist insurgents “so that no drop of spilt Chadian blood goes unpunished.”
“In response to the cowardly and barbaric acts perpetrated by Boko Haram terrorists… the armed forces carried out reprisal air strikes on the terrorists’ positions in Nigerian territory on Wednesday,” the military said in a statement.
Six Boko Haram bases were destroyed in the air raids, which caused “considerable human and material losses,” it said, without giving further details.
Monday’s attacks on the police headquarters and a police academy in N’Djamena were the first in the capital of the central African country, which has taken a lead role in a regional offensive against the Nigeria-based Boko Haram.
No group has claimed responsibility but Chad and its allies immediately blamed the insurgents, who have carried out a series of bloody attacks in border areas of countries that share a frontier with northeastern Nigeria.
But reacting to the attack, the Nigerian military said the claim that the Chadian military conducted air strikes against six terrorist camps in Nigeria is not correct.
According to a statement by the Director of Defence Information, Major General Chris Olukolade, “the fact is that the Nigerian Airforce surveillance mission identified targets tagged as Camp 6 around Bosso town which is not within Nigeria’s territory and alerted the partners accordingly. The places reported to have been struck by the Chadians are therefore most likely to be in Niger Republic and not Nigeria as widely reported in the international media.
“Although the terms of the multilateral and bilateral understanding with partners in the war against terror allow some degree of hot pursuit against the terrorists, the territory of Nigeria has not been violated as insinuated in the reports circulated in some foreign media.
“The Nigerian military will continue to cooperate with partners in the mission to exterminate or contain terrorists strictly in conformity with existing terms of the Concept of Operation at strategic, operational or tactical levels.
“It is, however, important that issues are accurately reported while avoiding misleading or unnecessary sensationalism from any quarter.”
Credit: Tribune (Nigeria)
