N’GOUBOUA, Chad (AP) – The Boko Haram militants attacked N’gouboua before dawn, marking the first time the Nigerian extremist group had hit a town inside Chad. Crying “Allahu akbar” or God is Great into the pre-dawn darkness, they opened fire indiscriminately and burned scores of mud-brick houses with gasoline, killing at least eight civilians and two security officers.
Nearly six years into its insurgency in Nigeria, the Islamic extremist group is now attacking villages in the other countries bordering Lake Chad – Chad, Niger and Cameroon – and local officials say the motive is greed, not a drive to establish an Islamic caliphate.
Some 3,400 Nigerian refugees had been living in N’gouboua at the time of the Feb. 13 attack and all have since been relocated further inland to a camp jointly run by the U.N. and the government of Chad, a predominantly Muslim country. Journalists who visited N’gouboua on Thursday saw traumatized and scared residents and nearly a dozen destroyed vehicles and motorcycles in the sand-blanketed streets.
The extremists had also set the town’s sole mosque ablaze.
Adam Dogo, a town resident, pointed to the charred woven mats that once formed the mosque’s ceiling. The call to prayer is muted now that the mosque’s speaker has gone up in flames. The floor where men once prayed is covered in ash.