Boko Haram fighters have killed 11 civilians in an overnight attack in Cameroon’s troubled Far North Region, security sources told AFP on Friday, April 11.
“Boko Haram made an incursion at night in the Tchakamari area. The toll is 11,” a source close to security services in the area said, confirming a report from a member of a local self-defense militia.
The bodies were “charred,” the source close to security services said, adding that the attackers had burnt the village.
The dead included both children and the aged and began at around 10 p.m. (2100 GMT) and lasted until about 1 a.m. Friday.
It was the deadliest Boko Haram raid in recent months in Cameroon. In November, a female suicide bomber killed 29 people in a busy market in Amchide, also in the Far North.
Boko Haram’s bloody insurgency began in northeastern Nigeria in 2009 but has since spread into neighboring Niger, Chad and Cameroon, prompting a regional military response. Some 27,000 people have been killed and two million others displaced, sparking a dire humanitarian crisis in the region.
Boko Haram split into two factions in mid-2016. One, led by long-time leader Abubakar Shekau, is notorious for suicide bombings and indiscriminate killings of civilians. Shekau pledged allegiance to ISIS leader Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi in March 2015, but ISIS central only gives formal backing to the other faction, which it calls Islamic State West Africa province.
With reporting from AFP
