A major ambush by Boko Haram on 23 March 2020
killed almost 100 government soldiers in the island village of Boma, as reported by Reuters on 25 March 2020. Residents of the Boma Peninsula were forced to flee and fear that worse is to come. According to The Guardian reporting on 1 April 2020, as a result of this seven hour attack, the army has declared the Lake Chad borderlands a war zone and requested "the local population to
clear the area, which is likely to add to the 169,000 people already internally displaced within Chad. By declaring the area a war zone, the military also has more power to regulate traffic and search homes."
Yonas Dembele, Persecution analyst at World Watch Research, comments: "Chad has been suffering from attacks by Nigeria"s Boko Haram fighters for years and according to the Norwegian Refugee Council"s 2018 Global Report on Internal Displacement (GRID), over 2 million people have already been displaced by violence in the whole
Lake Chad basin, across its borders with Chad, Nigeria, Niger and Cameroon. Despite regional efforts to end Boko Haram's campaign of violence against civilians and security forces, the group has succeeded in stepping up its attacks in recent months and expanding their reach. Many jihadist fighters are located in the Lake Chad region, from where they can launch attacks into the surrounding countries. According to World Christian Database figures listed in
Open Doors" WWL 2020 Country dossier for Chad (WWR, March 2020 update), 56.7% of the population are Muslim and 35.4% are Christian. Many of the Christian minority live in villages under threat of attack."
