# Boko Haram attack kills about 40 Chadian soldiers at Lake Chad base
*Event date: 2024-10-27*
An attack by Boko Haram on a military base near Ngouboua in Chad’s Lake region killed about 40 soldiers, according to RFI. President Mahamat Deby Itno visited the scene and ordered an operation to track down the attackers, turning the assault into a direct political and military test for his government.
The report says the strike happened overnight Sunday near the Nigerian border, in an area that has long been a staging ground for jihadist attacks around Lake Chad. In a statement, the Chadian presidency said the attack had “tragically left about 40 people dead,” while local and government sources said Boko Haram fighters seized weapons, burned vehicles mounted with heavy arms and took control of the garrison before leaving.
The location matters because the base housed more than 200 soldiers. That means the attack was not a raid on a small outpost but an assault on a significant military position in one of Chad’s most exposed regions. The report also says the president’s government has already linked the operation to a broader anti-jihadist response in the Lake Chad basin.
The attack is particularly serious because it comes in a region where Boko Haram and its offshoots have repeatedly targeted armies and civilians across borders. RFI noted that Lake Chad’s islands and swampy terrain provide hideouts for insurgent groups, making the region hard to secure. The report also reminded readers of Chad’s biggest one-day military losses in March 2020, when around 100 troops died in a raid on the Bohoma peninsula.
The presidency’s response was immediate and public. Deby Itno pledged to pursue the attackers and said the operation would continue until they were tracked down in their furthest hideouts. That language suggests the government is treating the incident not as a one-off raid but as part of a continuing campaign against Boko Haram’s presence around the lake.
The report does not provide a separate confirmed count of militant deaths, only that the attack reportedly involved clashes in which Boko Haram fighters took the base, seized matériel and departed. Even so, the death toll of about 40 Chadian soldiers is enough to show the scale of the blow. For Chad, the challenge now is not just retaliation but preventing a repeat of the kind of hit-and-run attack that has long defined the Lake Chad insurgency.
