Boko Haram fighters attacked a Chadian village overnight, killing several people in the first known lethal attack by the Nigerian militant group in the country, residents and a security source said on Friday.
“They came on board three canoes and succeeded in killing about ten people before being pushed back by the army,” said a resident of the village of Ngouboua on the shores of Lake Chad, Reuters reported.
The security source said that about 30 militants attacked the village in the early hours of the morning, setting houses ablaze.
Boko Haram militants based in northern Nigeria have staged a number of 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.
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.
Coop With ISIS Growing
Extremist groups Boko Haram and ISIS are growing increasingly connected in ways that could magnify their abilities to inflict violence and terror, a senior US intelligence official revealed Thursday.
National Counterterrorism Center Director Nicholas Rasmussen drew attention to “the increased intercommunication between Boko Haram and other terrorist groups in the northern part of, the northwestern part of Africa, and even with ISIL” during a hearing before the Senate Intelligence Committee.
He then pointed out that these extremist groups were broadening their reach through mutual contact.
“All of that just adds to the picture of an interconnected terrorist network with the ability to share resources, personnel, expertise and tradecraft in a way that serves as a multiplier to their own capabilities, and that’s a disturbing trend,” Rasmussen told the panel.
Boko Haram has previously been known to mirror the so-called Islamic State’s online media campaigns and push for a land grab, in a way that could have paved the road to future coordination. But this is the first time that the intelligence community has acknowledged that there was some degree of communication and interconnectivity between the two groups.
