Joint squad of the West African military force has revealed the killing of 20 Islamic fundamentalist jihadists during an operation in the Lake Chad basin that lasted three days.
The joint force was drawn from Cameroon, Chad, Nigeria and Niger, which are countries surrounding the Lake Chad basin, where the Boko Haram and the Islamic State in West Africa Province (ISWAP) terrorists have been unleashing violence on the territory.
The joint force of the four countries constitutes the Multinational Joint Task Force (MJTF) which was formed in 2015 to fight the Islamic fundamentalists established in 1994 in the Lake Chad basin and its environs.
An operative of the Multinational Joint Task Force (MJTF) was said to have disclosed that the joint task force engaged in new offensive in March to ‘completely eradicate the Boko Haram, ISWAP and other terrorist groups troubling inhabitants of the territory.’
The Multinational Joint Task Force (MJTF) had in a statement last Saturday indicated that aerial support to Nigerien and Nigerian forces from the coalition allowed them to carry out “aggressive patrols… against terrorists’ positions” in the jihadist “bastion” of Tumbun Rago, in the Nigerian state of Borno.
The statement added that “at least 20 terrorists were neutralised” despite “strong resistance”, between Wednesday and Friday.
A senior official of MJTF was said to have said that the task force “neutralised”, killed many of the terrorists in their combatant operations in the border territories of Cameroon and Nigeria.
The Multinational Joint Task Force (MJTF) had in a statement on April 25, disclosed that “30 terrorists” were “neutralised” by Nigerien forces in the Kaji Jiwa area in Niger. The MJTF, however, admitted that one soldier died.