With Gabon in hand, de Gaulle sent Leclerc to Chad, the only Free French territory that shared a border with territory controlled by Axis Powers, along its Sahara Desert border with Italian-controlled Libya. Leclerc's attention was drawn to two Italian outposts in the desert, Murzuk in southwestern Libya and Kufra in the southeast. Both were over from his base at Fort Lamy in Chad. He started with a small raid on Murzuk by eleven men of the "Régiment de Tirailleurs Sénégalais du Tchad" (RTST) and two troops of the British Long Range Desert Group (LRDG) on 11 January 1941. In February, he led a much larger operation that captured Kufra. After the battle, he had his men swear an oath known today as the "Serment de Koufra" ("Oath of Kufra"):