18th June, 2015
PHOTO: Reuters
The Defence Headquarters on Thursday said the claim that the Chadian military had conducted air strikes against six terrorist camps in Nigeria was not correct.
This was contained in a statement issued in Abuja by the Director of Defence Information, Maj.-Gen. Chris Olukolade.
Olukolade said the fact was that the Nigerian Airforce surveillance mission identified targets tagged: Camp 6 around Bosso town which was not within Nigerian territory “and alerted the partners, accordingly”.
He said the places reported to have been struck by the Chadians were therefore most likely to be in Niger Republic and not Nigeria as widely reported in the international media.
“Although the terms of the multilateral and bilateral understanding with partners in the war against terror allow some degree of hot pursuit against the terrorists, the territory of Nigeria has not been violated as insinuated in the reports circulated in some foreign media,” he said.
Olukolade said the Nigerian military would continue to cooperate with partners in the mission to exterminate or contain terrorists strictly in conformity with existing terms of the Concept of Operation at strategic, operational or tactical levels.
He said it was however important that issues were “accurately reported while avoiding misleading or unnecessary sensationalism from any quarter”.