President Idriss Deby of Chad said Wednesday he knew the whereabouts of Boko Haram leader, Abubakar Shekau, and called on him to surrender or risk death.
Chad’s army has waged a series of battles against Boko Haram as part of a cross-border military campaign and has re-taken territory the militant group held in the North East.
“Abubakar Shekau must surrender. We know where he is. If he doesn’t give himself up he will suffer the same fate as his compatriots,” Deby told a news conference after a regional meeting.
“He was in Dikwa two days ago. He managed to get away but we know where he is. It’s in his interests to surrender,” Deby said, referring to a town in north-eastern Nigeria held by Boko Haram that fell to Chad’s army earlier this week.
Nigeria’s military has said on at least three occasions it had killed Shekau, or a man claiming to be him. Each time the leader has resurfaced to issue a fresh jihadist video, one of numerous videos the group has made.
Nigerian security officials insist he is in fact a composite character whose role is taken by a rotating cast of different militant fighters.
According to security services, the original Abubakar Shekau was the son of poor farmers who was radicalised while attending theological schools and took over Boko Haram in 2010.
The Nigerian military said last September that a man posing as Shekau in videos posted online had in fact been killed after fighting with troops.
The United States and other experts, however, have questioned the credibility of that claim while Shekau has outright rejected it in a video.
Nigeria and its neighbours Chad, Niger and Cameroon last month launched an unprecedented joint campaign against Boko Haram after the militants widened their offensive with attacks in the neighbouring countries.
Nigerian military spokesman, Major General Chris Olukolade on Wednesday also pledged to snuff out Boko Haram, which claims to be fighting to create an Islamic state in Nigeria.
“Indeed there is no going back or slowing down anywhere,” he told a news conference in Abuja.
“The air campaigns are continuing with a view to dislodging all the identified terrorist cells, enclaves or hideouts anywhere in the designated mission area,” the spokesman said.
“The continuous aerial bombardment of identified terrorists’ cells and hideouts by the Nigerian Air Force and subsequent ground offensive by the Nigerian troops pursuing the dislodged terrorists is proving worthwhile.”
The Boko Haram conflict has killed more than 13,000 people since 2009 and forced more than one million to flee their homes in northeast Nigeria.
On Tuesday, the Nigerian military claimed to have killed more than 70 Boko Haram fighters and repulsed their bid to seize a key town in Nigeria’s restive north.
Around 150 Boko Haram fighters entered the fishing town of Konduga on Monday with a large herd of cattle pretending to be herders and opened fire on troops stationed in the town, leading to a six-hour gun battle.
Soldiers and vigilantes have repelled more than a dozen attacks by Boko Haram on Konduga, which is some 35 kilometres (21 miles) southeast of Maiduguri, the capital of Borno State and the birthplace of the Boko Haram movement.
Konduga could serve as a launching pad for attacks on Maiduguri.
The Boko Haram unrest has seen nearly 250,000 people flee to neighbouring countries, according to the United Nations refugee agency UNHCR.
The Chadian army is considered one of the best in the region, backed by a strong air force. It first deployed to help Cameroon fend off Boko Haram and is now pressing into Nigerian territory after capturing the border town of Gambaru last month.
