Dozens of Nigerian fishermen are feared dead after a Chadian army attack against jihadists on Lake Chad, a civilian militia member and a union official told AFP on Sunday.<\/p>\n
The militia member said the number of dead was unknown, as the operation on the vast expanse of water and marshland between Nigeria, Cameroon, Niger and Chad was still ongoing.<\/p>\n
But a Lake Chad fishermen’s union official said: “Chadian fighter jets bombarded two islands. So far, 40 Nigerian fishermen have been missing and believed to have drowned from the strikes, according to fishermen who escaped.”<\/p>\n
The militia member said Chadian fighter jets had been bombing islands controlled by Boko Haram on the Nigerian side of the lake since Friday, following a recent attack on its troops.<\/p>\n
He said there were “huge casualties” among the fishermen, who pay tax to Boko Haram to allow them to fish in the area.<\/p>\n
The bombing was concentrated on the jihadist stronghold of Shuwa island, where Nigeria, Niger and Chad meet on the lake, he added.<\/p>\n
“Many people were killed,” said Adamu Haladu, a fisherman from Baga, in northeast Nigeria.<\/p>\n
“Most of those killed in the airstrikes are from the town of Doron Baga on the Nigerian shores of the lake and from Taraba state.<\/p>\n
“It is not a secret that Nigerian fishermen pay tax to Boko Haram to have access to the remote island with a huge fish reservoir. Boko Haram ferry them on their boats to those islands and bring them back with their catch.”<\/p>\n
– Recent attacks –<\/p>\n
The Chadian army has not yet issued a statement.<\/p>\n
But Chad declared three days of national mourning last week after a Boko Haram ambush Wednesday on an army patrol in Lake Chad’s island area killed two generals.<\/p>\n
Two days before that, a Boko Haram raid on a military base on the shores of Lake Chad killed at least 24 soldiers.<\/p>\n
In October 2024, Chad’s army was accused of having killed dozens of Nigerian fishermen in air strikes launched against Boko Haram on Tilma island on Lake Chad.<\/p>\n
That was in reprisal for a jihadist attack that killed 40 Chadian soldiers, but witnesses said the air strikes had instead killed the fishermen.<\/p>\n
Chad’s military at the time denied it had targeted civilians.<\/p>\n
The Lake Chad area serves as a base for both Boko Haram and the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP).<\/p>\n
Nigeria, Chad, Cameroon and Niger in 2015 reactivated a multinational force set up in the mid-1990s to combat jihadist groups operating around the lake.<\/p>\n
Niger left the regional force last year due to strained ties between the military government in Niamey and its neighbours<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dozens of Nigerian fishermen are feared dead after a Chadian army attack against jihadists on Lake Chad, a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":635899,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4,450,451,3,452,453],"class_list":["post-635898","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-breaking-news","tag-breaking-news","tag-breakingnews","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/635898","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=635898"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/635898\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/635899"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=635898"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=635898"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=635898"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}