Four soldiers in southwest Chad were killed and dozens injured in an explosion on a boat thought to have been caused by an improvised bomb, Reuters news agency reports.
The blast occurred on Tuesday night on a boat travelling near Ngouboua, around 25 km (15 miles) from the Nigerian border, Dimoya Souapebe, a district administrator in the town of Baga Sola is quoted as saying.
Sola was also quoted to have said “the explosive device was placed at the bottom of the boat,” he said. “We are trying to find out if this is a new technique of Boko Haram.”
Chad has suffered attacks on its soil from Nigeria-based Boko Haram since 2015. The jihadist insurgency first erupted in northeast Nigeria in 2009 before spreading into Chad, Niger, and northern Cameroon, and killed more than 30,000 people.
Chad’s armed forces are among the most respected in the region, a reputation forged during decades of war and rebellions and honed in a 2013 campaign against Islamist militants in the deserts of northern Mali.
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