Boko Haram militants surrender to Chadian troops

A large group of militants belonging to the Boko Haram Takfiri terrorist group along with their families have surrendered themselves to the army troops in Chad since September.

“They surrendered to our troops on the front line in Lake Chad,” said Colonel Mohammad Dole, the Chief Military Public Information Officer for the Multinational Joint Task Force (MNJTF) headquartered in Chad’s capital N’Djamena, on Saturday.

Dole further said all these militants, some 240, mostly Chadian nationals, had been held in two detention centers along with their families in the remote town of Baga Solo.

“The surrenders are taking place because of the firepower of our operations. The groups, many of them armed, have been arriving since September and their number keeps increasing,” he added.

The MNJTF is a joint force consisting of troops from Nigeria, Niger, Cameroon, Chad and Benin, tasked with ending the Boko Haram militancy in the Lake Chad region. It launched a regional operation in July against the group, which has pledged allegiance to the Daesh Takfiri terrorist group.

Boko Haram seeks to overthrow the government and seize power in northern Nigeria. The group has killed some 20,000 people and displaced more than 2.6 million since 2009, when it started its campaign.

The terrorist group, however, did not confine itself to the northern parts of Nigeria and has widened its attacks into neighboring countries, notably Cameroon and Chad. They have forcibly recruited young men in Chad.

The terrorists have kidnapped hundreds of men, women and children in their six-year campaign. The kidnapping of over 200 schoolgirls from Nigeria’s northeastern town of Chibok in April 2014 unleashed a wave of international outrage.

Source: Presstv