Chad has declared three days of national mourning after a Boko Haram ambush killed two senior military generals in the Lake Chad Basin on Wednesday, May 6 — the second deadly attack on Chadian security forces in less than a week.

According to an officer from Chad's General Staff, security and defence force boats patrolling the lake's island area "fell into a Boko Haram ambush" on Wednesday afternoon, killing the two generals. The assault came just two days after militants struck the Barka Tolorom military base on the Chadian shore of Lake Chad, leaving at least 24 soldiers dead and several more wounded. The government declared national mourning from midnight on May 6 to midnight on May 9, ordering flags to be flown at half-mast and banning all festive activities across the country. "We will continue the fight with renewed determination until this threat is completely eradicated," President Mahamat Idriss Deby Itno said following the earlier attack.

The Lake Chad Basin — a vast expanse of water, marshland and remote islands shared between Chad, Nigeria, Cameroon and Niger — has been a jihadist stronghold since around 2009. It shelters both Boko Haram and its rival splinter group, the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP). Recent months have seen a surge in activity by JAS, one of Boko Haram's main factions, including kidnappings and direct assaults on military positions. A similar attack in October 2024 killed around 40 Chadian soldiers at a base in the same region. In response, President Deby launched a major counteroffensive, Operation Haskanite, which the Chadian army declared complete in February 2025, claiming Boko Haram had no remaining sanctuary on Chadian territory. The latest attacks suggest otherwise.

Chad, a landlocked country in north-central Africa, has faced prolonged instability marked by coups, armed rebellions and entrenched poverty, making it one of the poorest nations on the continent. The persistence of jihadist violence along its southern lake frontier underscores the limits of military operations alone in addressing a threat deeply embedded in a difficult and porous geographic terrain. With two generals now among the dead, the attacks represent a significant blow not only in human terms but to the credibility of recent counterterrorism efforts — and will likely increase pressure on Ndjamena to reassess its strategy in the region.