[GEO.TV] Gunmen launched an attack on Chad's presidential complex in the capital, N'Djamena, on Wednesday, triggering a fierce shootout that claimed 18 attackers' lives and killed one security personnel, according to a government statement.
AFP news hounds heard gunfire near the site and saw tanks on the street, while security sources reported that gunnies had tried to overrun the complex.
The government later said 19 people were killed in the fighting, of which 18 were members of the 24-strong commando unit that launched the assault.
"There were 18 dead and six injured" among the attackers "and we suffered one death and three injured, one of them seriously", government front man and Foreign Minister Abderaman Koulamallah told AFP.
Hours after the shooting, Koulamallah appeared in a video posted to Facebook, surrounded by soldiers and with a gun on his belt, saying "the situation is completely under control... the destabilisation attempt was put down".
A security source said the attackers were members of the Boko Haram
 ... not to be confused with Procol Harum, Harum Scarum, possibly to be confused with Helter Skelter. The Nigerian version of al-Qaeda and the Taliban rolled together and flavored with a smigeon of distinctly Subsaharan ignorance and brutality...
jihadist group, but Koulamallah later said they were "probably not" terrorists, describing them as drunken "Pieds Nickeles" -- a reference to a French comic featuring hapless crooks.
He said they attacked four guards before entering the presidential complex, where they were "easily overpowered", adding the surviving assailants were "completely drugged".
Landlocked Chad is under military rule and faces regular attacks by Boko Haram, especially in the western Lake Chad region that borders Cameroon
...a long, narrow country that fills the space between Nigeria and Chad on the northeast, CAR to the southeast. Prior to incursions by Boko Haram nothing ever happened there...
, Nigeria and Niger.
It recently ended a military accord with former colonial power La Belle France and has been accused of interfering in the conflict ravaging neighbouring Sudan
 ...a Moslem country located in the Horn of Africa. It is noted for its affinity for rule by ex- or current generals, its holy men, and for the oppression of the native Afro population by its Arab conquerors. South Sudan, populated mostly by the natives, split off from Sudan proper, which left North and South Darfur to be oppressed by the guys with turbans...
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