Chad threatens to withdraw from regional force after Boko Haram attack kills over 40 soldiers

Chad says it will withdraw its troops from the United Nations-supported Multinational Joint Task Force of the Lake Chad Basin Commission, which combats Boko Haram in Cameroon, Chad, Niger and Nigeria.

Officials from Chad say its military is not getting enough assistance to fight the terrorist group since an attack last week killed more than 40 of Chad’s soldiers.

Chad's President Mahamat Idiss Deby says his country will pull out of the Multinational Joint Task Force of the Lake Chad Basin Commission, which has some 11,000 troops, because of the absence of what he calls coordinated efforts among member states troops in jointly fighting Boko Haram terrorism.

A release read on Chad's state TV on Monday says Deby is surprised at the slow pace at which the task force, a regional group that includes rescue workers, reacts to Boko Haram attacks.

The task force was created in April 2012 by Cameroon, Chad, Niger, Benin and Nigeria to jointly fight Boko Haram and bring back peace in areas affected by terrorism in Lake Chad Basin shared by the five countries.

The African Union, or AU, authorized the force to operate in February 2015. The force says it receives regular technical support from the United Nations to protect civilians affected by terrorism in the Lake Chad Basin.

Deby did not say when Chad will withdraw troops. The Central African state’s president, however, says Chad's military will protect civilians from all forms of terrorism, including Boko Haram.

Remadji Hoinathy is a lecturer at the Department of Anthropology at the University of N'Djamena in Chad and a researcher on strategic development in central Africa and the Lake Chad Basin Commission.

He said Deby is disgruntled because Chad is not receiving the assistance it needs to track and eliminate several hundred Boko Haram fighters who attacked and killed more than 40 Chad government troops in the Lake Chad Basin last week.

He said Deby, who is in the Lake Chad area to supervise a security operation to fight the assailants after the deadly attack, is dissatisfied that his troops are not getting immediate assistance from Cameroon, Benin, Niger and Nigeria.

Remadji spoke Monday on Chad state TV.

Chad's government sait it informed the task force after last week’s attack on its troops in Ngouboua, a western village in Lake Chad, on the island of Bakaram, near the border with Nigeria.

Cameroon, Niger, Nigeria and Benin are yet to react to Deby's threats to pull his troops from the task force.

The statement about Chad troops leaving was issued after media reports that the central African state’s military recently deployed to fight Boko Haram mistakenly killed at least a dozen fishermen in Lake Chad thinking that they were militants.

Chad's government said reports that its fighter jets bombed the fishermen were unfounded.

Belngar Larme Laguerre is the president of Chad’s National Commission on Human Rights. He spoke via a messaging app from N’Djamena.

He said Boko Haram hides among civilians or uses civilians as human shields when attacked, but that Chad troops are well-trained to find terrorists hiding among civilians.

He said he has not received complaints from civilians that the Chad soldiers deployed to fight Boko Haram last week disrespected human rights.

Local media reported that the attack on fishermen took place in Tilma, an island on the border with Nigeria.

VOA could not independently verify if there was an attack on civilians.

Some 40,000 people have been killed and 3 million have fled their homes since 2009, when fighting between Nigerian government troops and Boko Haram militants degenerated into an armed conflict and spread to Cameroon, Niger and Chad, according to the United Nations.