The Pentagon deploys 80 Air Force troops to Chad to maintain a drone force to assist in efforts to find the abducted Nigerian schoolgirls—as Nigerians organize self-defense militias.
Almost 20,000 people of Chadian origin have fled violence in the Central African Republic in recent weeks, targeted by armed groups in xenophobic attacks.
Authorities in Cameroon have beefed up border controls in the Far North region to guard against infiltration by Boko Haram as civilians flee the growing war in Nigeria.
Efforts by pastoralist militias to bar refugees from returning to their lands in Darfur have sparked yet a new wave of fighting and displacement—with 250,000 uprooted this year.
Senegalese police detained former Chadian dictator Hissene Habre to face an African Union trial on charges of crimes against humanity, war crimes and torture.
French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said in Niger that the attackers who carried out double suicide bombings on a military camp and uranium mine likely came from Libya.
One year after Tuareg rebels briefly seized power in Mali’s desert north, they face hunger, ethnic attacks and rights abuses at the hands of French-backed government forces.
Chad’s military announced that its forces in Mali killed renegade AQIM commander Mokhtar Belmokhtar in an assault on a “terrorist base” in the Adrar de Ifhogas mountains.
Some 100 US troops have been mobilized to Niger to establish a drone base, while across the border in northern Mali French-led forces face growing jihadist resistance.
Troops from Chad have been sent in to take Kidal, the town in northern Mali that remains under the control of Tuareg separatist rebels, as France seeks to avoid confrontation.
Senegal’s new Extraordinary African Chambers officially opened to try Chad’s ex-dictator Hissene Habre, accused of thousands of political killings during his eight-year rule.
In a mission slated to last two weeks, US Air Force C-17 transport planes are ferrying troops and material from France to Mali for the offensive against jihadist rebels.
