Boko Haram attacks Chadian village as revolt spreads

Boko Haram attacks Chadian village as revolt spreads

 (Reuters) - Boko Haram fighters attacked a Chadian village
overnight, killing several people including a local chief, in the first known lethal
attack by the Nigerian militant group in Chad, residents and a security source said
on Friday.
Dozens of militants arrived in the early hours of the morning on motorized canoes
at the fishing village on the shores of Lake Chad, setting houses ablaze and
attacking a police station.
"They came on board three pirogues and succeeded in killing about ten people
before being pushed back by the army," said a resident of the village of
Ngouboua, about 20 km (12 miles) east of the Nigerian border.
Other local sources said that the death toll was lower, at between three and five.
The local chief, Mai Kolle, was killed in an exchange of gunfire with the army,
they said.
An army spokesman declined immediate comment on the attack.
Militants from the Sunni jihadist group, based in northern Nigeria, have stepped up
cross-border attacks in recent weeks in their campaign to carve out an Islamist
emirate around the Lake Chad area which borders Nigeria, Chad, Cameroon and
Niger.
Thousands fled the Niger border town of Diffa this week after a wave of raids and
suicide attacks.
Chad's army, one of the best in the region, has joined a regional offensive against
them and says it has killed hundreds of fighters in the past fortnight.
In a bid to contain Boko Haram, which has killed thousands and kidnapped
hundreds in its five-year revolt, President Idriss Deby's government mediated
peace talks between the Nigerian government and the group last October.
The talks sought to secure the release of 200 schoolgirls from Nigeria's Chibok
but Boko Haram later said it had married off the schoolgirls to its fighters.
Chad is also the base for a French regional counter-insurgency operation
"Barkhane" which provides intelligence and logistical support to the Chadian
army. A source in Barkhane reached by telephone in N'Djamena said he was not
immediately aware of the attack.
Nigeria has postponed for six weeks a presidential election that had been due on
Saturday, citing the security threat from Boko Haram.

(Reporting by Madjiasra Nako; Additional reporting and writing by Emma Farge;
Editing by Giles Elgood)