Nigeria-based Boko Haram Islamists carried out their first attack Friday inside Chad, killing ten people including local chief officer in a strike on a village on the shores of Lake Chad, a security source said. Dozens of militants arrived by motorised canoe at the fishing village on the shores of Lake Chad early in the morning, setting houses ablaze and attacking a police station. "They came on board three pirogues and succeeded in killing about ten people before being pushed back by the army," said a resident of the village of Ngouboua, about 20 km (12 miles) east of the Nigerian border, to which thousands of Nigerian refugees had fled in early January after an attack on the town of Baga. Chadian military spokesman Azem Bermandoa Agouna also confirmed the pre-dawn attack on Ngouboua,"They started firing on everything that moved. The military retaliated," the spokesman said on national radio, adding the fighters then fled back towards Nigeria with troops "in hot pursuit". Chadian aircraft were scrambled to help repel the offensive, destroying the attackers' vessels with strikes, the security source added Two-thirds of Ngouboua, which lies on a peninsula about 18 kilometres (11 miles) from the border and had become a sanctuary for thousands of Nigerians fleeing the militants' attacks, was torched in the onslaught, the source said. Militants from the jihadist group, based in northern Nigeria less than 100 kilometres from the Chadian capital, have stepped up cross-border attacks in recent weeks in their campaign to carve out an Islamist emirate around the Lake Chad area which borders Nigeria, Chad, Cameroon and Niger. Security sources have quietly warned of sleeper cells nestled in Lake Chad - a vast maze of tiny islands and swamp. Residents are now fleeing the village and a Chadian humanitarian vehicle was attacked as it tried to escape, United Nations refugee agency spokesman Adrian Edwards told reporters in Geneva. In Niger, thousands fled the border town of Diffa this week after a wave of raids and suicide attacks. Boko Haram insurgents, including a suspected female suicide bomber, also attacked one town and two villages in Nigeria's Borno state on Thursday, killing at least 31 people according to security, hospital sources and witnesses. Nigeria has postponed a presidential election, that had been due on Saturday, for six weeks, citing the security threat from Boko Haram. Chad's army, one of the best in the region, has joined a regional offensive against Boko Haram and says it has killed hundreds of fighters in the past fortnight. In a bid to contain Boko Haram, which has killed thousands and kidnapped hundreds in its five-year revolt, President Idriss Deby's government mediated peace talks between the Nigerian government and the group last October. The negotiations sought to secure the release of 200 schoolgirls from Nigeria's Chibok but Boko Haram later said it had married off the schoolgirls to its fighters. News of the attack in Chad coincided with reports of further attacks by the insurgents within Nigeria, where general elections initially due on Saturday have been postponed by six weeks over the violence, until March 28. At least 21 people were killed in two separate attacks Thursday on northeastern villages near the major city of Maiduguri, a community leader and a witness said. "They (Boko Haram) killed 12 people in Akida village and nine others in Mbuta village during a raid," said community leader Mustapha Abbagini. A witness to the attack in Mbuta gave the same death toll. The attackers first struck Akida, which is some 25 kilometres (16 miles) from Maiduguri, while villagers were sleeping. After setting homes and businesses on fire, the insurgents left and attacked Mbuta, Abbagini said. Mbuta resident Hamidu Bukar said the attackers accused the villagers of "spying for military authorities". Also Thursday a female suicide bomber blew herself up at a crowded market in the town of Biu, in the south of Borno state, of which Maiduguri is the capital. The city has a population that has swollen to roughly two million because of displaced people seeking safety. A civilian vigilante helping the Nigerian army in the counter-insurgency and a source at the town's hospital both said that the death toll had risen from seven to 11 after the blast. "Four more people, all of them adults, died at the hospital here in Biu while receiving treatment," said the vigilante, Abor Kabiru. A hospital source confirmed that 11 bodies had been identified. The death toll could increase further, with health officials working to establish the identities of at least two other people blown apart by the blast. Boko Haram, which already controls vast swathes of northeast Nigeria, has ramped up its bloody, six-year insurgency in the past few months. The conflict has killed more than 13,000 since 2009 and become an increasing regional threat. Last week, the Islamists also carried out their first deadly raids in Niger to Nigeria's north. The militants struck the border town of Diffa five times, after Niger announced it planned to send 750 troops into Nigeria.
