ATP - Chad's parliament has
decided to prolong a state of emergency in the southern Lake Chad region, prey
to bomb attacks by the Nigerian Islamists of Boko Haram, a parliamentary source
said Thursday.
The resolution was
unanimously passed on Wednesday night by 147 members of parliament and will
extend the special powers given to regional authorities until March 22, 2016.
The Chadian government
initially decreed a state of emergency in the region on November 9 after two
women suicide bombers killed two local people and injured 14 others at
Ngouboua.
Boko Haram's ruthless
insurgency has claimed at least 15,000 lives since it began in neighbouring
northeast Nigeria in 2009.
Deadly raids have been launched against Chad,
Cameroon and Niger as the three countries deployed troops to help Nigerian
forces.
The borders of all four
nations converge in the Lake Chad region, which has many inhabitants living on
a host of small islands in fishing villages. The area also offers potential
refuge to Boko Haram fighters.
Chad's parliament has
empowered the regional governor to ban the movement of people and vehicles in
zones of his choice at specified hours. He can also order "house to house
searches by day and night under the authority of the Prosecutor of the
Republic, and to recover weapons," according to the government.
Eleven people were wounded
when a suspected Boko Haram activist carried out a suicide bomb attack on a
Chadian village a few kilometres (miles) from the border with Nigeria on
November 1.
The most deadly attack on
the Chadian shore of the lake took place on October 10. Three suicide bombers
attacked the town of Baga Sola, a local administrative centre. The blasts
killed 41 people and injured 48 others, according to the Chadian government.
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