Battle of Maaten al-Sarra

Battle of Maaten al-Sarra
Part of the Toyota War
Date September 5, 1987 Location Maaten al-Sarra Air Base, Libya 21°41′20″N 21°49′42″E / 21.6888548°N 21.828289°E / 21.6888548; 21.828289 Result Decisive Chadian victory
Belligerents
Libya	Chad
Commanders and leaders
Muammar Gaddafi	Hassan Djamous
Strength
2,500	2,000
Casualties and losses
1,000–1,713 killed 300 PoW 70 tanks 30 APCs 26–32aircraft	65 killed 112 wounded
Location of the Maaten al-Sarra Airbase within Libya, in relation to Chad.

The battle of Maaten al-Sarra was a battle fought between Chad and Libya on September 5, 1987 during the Toyota War. The battle took the form of a surprise Chadian raid against the Libyan Maaten al-Sarra Air Base, meant to remove the threat of Libyan airpower, that had already thwarted the Chadian attack on the Aouzou Strip in August. The first clash ever held in Libyan territory since the beginning of the Chadian-Libyan conflict, the attack was fully successful, causing a high number of Libyan casualties and low Chadian casualties, also contributing to the definitive ceasefire signed on September 11 among the warring countries.

In 1983, Libyan troops invaded Chad in support of the rebel Transitional Government of National Unity (GUNT) fighting against the Chadian government led by Hissène Habré. French military interventions had limited the Libyan-GUNT advance to the 16th parallel (the so-called Red Line), freezing the situation on the ground until 1986, when the bulk of the GUNT forces turned against their Libyan patrons. Habré seized upon the opportunity to turn the tide against his enemy, and ordered his troops in December to attack Libyan positions in northern Chad. Starting in January 1987 with Fada and continuing with B'ir Kora and Ouadi Doum, the Chadian National Armed Forces' (FANT) commander-in-chief Hassan Djamous reported a series of key victories that forced Libyan forces to fall back on the Aouzou Strip.

Ignoring French pleas for restraint, Habré assumed a militant attitude towards the Libyan occupation of the Aouzou Strip; his troops successfully took Aouzou on August 8, but were repulsed on August 28, partly due to French refusal to provide air cover for Habré's attempt to regain Aouzou.

Before the final Libyan assault, Habré had withdrawn Hassan Djamous and most of his veteran troops, planning to let them rest for a new offensive that would finally secure the Strip. Habré, judging by the decisive role played by close-range Libyan air strikes in the setback at Aouzou, concluded that Libya's greatest advantage was its ability to conduct endless air strikes. To remove this threat, Habré ordered Djamous to take 2,000 troops and destroy the main Libyan airbase in southern Libya, Maaten al-Sarra, 60 miles north of the Chadian-Libyan border. Habré may also have been encouraged in this raid by French President François Mitterrand's public declaration on September 3 that the Red Line was obsolete and thus French troops in Chad would no longer be bound by it.