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Chad soldier, 20 Boko Haram militants killed in clashes

Saturday, 24 March 2018 4:11 PM [ Last Update: Saturday, 24 March 2018 4:17 PM ]

A Chadian soldier carries weapons seized from Boko Haram in the city of Damasak, Nigeria, March 18, 2015. (Photo by AP)

A Chadian soldier and 20 militants from the Nigeria-based Takfiri group Boko Haram have been killed in a clash in the volatile Lake Chad region.

A Chadian military officer said Saturday that the incident took place on Friday on an islet named Tchoukou Hadje, adding that five soldiers were injured.

"Twenty Boko Haram members were killed and a large amount of weapons was recovered," the officer said. "The Chadian army lost one member."

Two Chadian soldiers including a captain were killed in an ambush in the area a month ago in the first attack by the Nigerian militant group on Chadian soil since May last year in which nine soldiers died.

Chad is a member of a multinational task force combating Boko Haram across its border with Nigeria, Niger and Cameroon. The force has been created with the aim of preventing a spillover of the militancy to those countries from Nigeria.

Boko Haram has been largely pushed out of its main strongholds in northern Nigeria, according to the country’s military and government. The group, however, is still active in its Sambisa Forest enclave in Borno and launches sporadic attacks on civilians and security forces from there.

More than 20,000 people have been killed and hundreds of thousands displaced in more than eight years of insurgency by Boko Haram in Nigeria, Chad, Cameroon and Niger. The group pledged allegiance to the Takfiri Daesh group in 2015.

The United Nations has warned that areas affected by Boko Haram face a humanitarian crisis.

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