Chad air force bombs Boko Haram out of Nigerian border town

MAIDUGURI, Nigeria — Chad sent a warplane dropping bombs and ground troops to drive Islamic extremists from a Nigerian border town, leaving it strewn with the bodies of the Islamic extremists, witnesses said Friday.

Thursday's bombing marked the first such action by foreign troops on Nigerian soil to fight the militants of Boko Haram.

To further help Nigeria battle its extremists, the African Union moved to send ground forces and the U.S. said it would assist.

Also Thursday, Boko Haram fighters made a second attack in a week on Maiduguri, the biggest city in Nigeria's northeast. Soldiers fled when the insurgents began launching rockets just outside the city of 2 million but the militants were fought off by the civilian self-defense group armed with homemade hunting rifles, according to its spokesman, Muhammad Gava.

Abari Modu said he witnessed the Chadian offensive on Malumfatori town in Nigeria's Borno state at an axis bordering Chad, Niger and Cameroon.

"We saw the fighter jet when it started shelling and bombarding the insurgents who were lodging mostly inside the local government secretariat and the district head's palace," he told The Associated Press.

He said the bodies of many Boko Haram fighters were still in the town Friday morning. Modu spoke by telephone after crossing the border from a Chadian village where he had sought refuge after Boko Haram seized Malumfatori at the end of October.

Read Saturday’s Arkansas Democrat-Gazette for full details.

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