Troops from a West African military force killed some 20 jihadists in three days during an operation in the Lake Chad basin, the coalition said Sunday, IgbereTV reports
The lake basin, shared by Cameroon, Chad, Nigeria and Niger, and its countless islets have become one of the main havens for jihadists from Nigeria’s Boko Haram and its dissident branch, the Islamic State in West Africa Province (ISWAP).
The four countries’ militaries revived the Multinational Joint Task Force (MJTF) in 2015 to fight the extremists in the basin after its establishment in 1994. The force had been dormant until then.
The forces launched a new offensive in March that aimed to “completely destroy Boko Haram and other terrorist groups which plague the basin”, a senior MJTF official, who wished to remain anonymous, told AFP Sunday
