President Idriss Deby of Chad on Wednesday called on Boko Haram leader, Abubakar Shekau, to surrender or face death.
Derby told a news conference in N’djamena, that he knows the whereabouts of Shekau, who, according to him, was sighted in Dikwa , a village in Borno State two days ago. “Abubakar Shekau must surrender. We know where he is. If he doesn’t give himself up he will suffer the same fate as his compatriots,” he said. “He (Shekau) was in Dikwa two days ago. He managed to get away but we know where he is. It’s in his interests to surrender,” Deby added.
Chadian troops earlier this week liberated the village which is about 85 kilometres away from Maiduguri, the Borno State capital from Boko Haram. During a battle for the village, the Chadian soldiers killed over 100 Boko Haram insurgents. The insurgents were said to have fled to a huge building where they were found inside wardrobes by the troops, who fired volleys of bullets at them.
But in an apparent last act of defiance, a suicide bomber among the fighters climbed into a truck carrying gas canisters and blew it up, killing a Chadian soldier and injuring 34. A Chadian soldier told a Reuters reporter visiting the town after fighting subsided, that the building was Boko Haram’s command centre. “They came to hide here as we advanced,” the soldier said, pointing to the bodies in the wardrobes.
The Chadian army spokesman, Col. Azem Bermandoa, who confirmed the killings, said his men chased those who escaped about 15 kilometres out of the town, where many walls were sprayed with bullets and most houses lay deserted. According to the report, the Nigerian military had listed Dikwa as one of the towns it wanted to liberate from the insurgents before the general elections.
Chadian forces had planned to take the town last month, but were ordered back by the Nigeria military , which said it planned to attack it. But a Chadian soldier in Dikwa claimed that the closest Nigerian soldiers got to the town as of the time of the latest development was 50 kilometres.
