The Chad Presidency said at least 40 Chadian soldiers have been killed after their base was attacked on Sunday evening.
President Mahamat Déby has ordered a counter-mission to track down the culprits, according to a statement from his office.
The attack reportedly happened on an island called Barkaram, in a vast marshy region that was once covered by the waters of Lake Chad before its dramatic shrinking in recent decades.
No suspects for Sunday’s attack are named in the presidency’s statement, but the area is close to the border zones of Nigeria and Niger where Islamist militants are known to operate.
Sunday’s attack is one of the worst suffered by Chadian soldiers since 2020, when about 100 soldiers died in a raid which prompted then-President Idriss Déby to launch an operation against Islamist militants.
Local residents have told the AFP news agency they believe fighters from Boko Haram – an Islamist militant group based over the border in Nigeria – were to blame for this latest attack, and say at least 200 soldiers were stationed at the garrison at the time.
It is a blow to President Déby, who is an elite soldier by training, and the son of the former president who was killed three years ago in battle with rebels close to the Libyan border.
The Lake Chad basin is bordered by Cameroon, Chad, Niger and Nigeria – all of which are part of a Multinational Joint Task Force that seeks to stamp out the armed groups operating in the region.
But Islamists “often regroup when troops withdraw”, and better funding and planning is needed, says the International Crisis Group.
In recent years, there have been several coups in the region, in Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso. The military in each country cited the inability to deal with the Islamist militant threat as one of the reasons for the ouster of the civilian governments.
Analyst Paul Melly writes that, surrounded by so many regional crises, Chad stands out as an island of continued stable partnership with the West – and is now deepening relations with Russia in a ploy that irritates and pressures France and the US.
Chad has also become a key conduit for arms flowing into Sudan, and is hosting large numbers of refugees from the country’s civil war in camps near its eastern border.
