admin
Yaound — At least four people were killed in twin suicide attacks in the far north of Cameroon, an area that has been repeatedly targeted by Boko Haram jihadists from neighbouring Nigeria, security sources and state media said on yesterday.
“Two suicide bombers blew themselves up in two districts of Waza” on the Nigerian border on Tuesday night, a security source who did not wish to be named, said.
State radio confirmed the report, saying two assailants detonated explosives, “killing six people, including themselves”.
The victims included civilian vigilantes who were trained by the community to guard Waza against attacks, the security source said.
The attacks are the first of their kind in Waza, a town on the edge of a national park teeming with lions, elephants and other wildlife that used to draw tourists but which has been abandoned by foreign visitors since the region, which borders Nigeria and Chad, became a target for extremist attacks.
The attacks have been blamed on Boko Haram, a radical Sunni jihadist group seeking to create a hardline Islamic state in northeast Nigeria.
Over the past year Boko Haram has stepped up cross-border attacks in Niger, Chad and Cameroon while also continuing to mount shooting and suicide assaults on markets, mosques and other mostly civilian targets within Nigeria itself.
Cameroon is part of a regional coalition helping Nigeria combat the jihadists.
Meanwhile, Cameroonian forces have killed about 100 Boko Haram Takfiri militants and freed some 900 captives held by the Nigeria-based militant group.
“A special clean-up operation from November 26 to 28” against Boko Haram militants in the border area with Nigeria “neutralized more than 100” of them, Cameroon Defense Minister Joseph Beti Assomo said in a statement broadcast on national radio yesterday.
Cameroon troops managed to free “almost 900 hostages, seize a large arms and munitions cache and black-and-white flags,” the statement added, referring to the flag of the Daesh Takfiri terrorists.
The identities of the freed hostages are still unknown as nothing was mentioned in the statement and the region remains inaccessible to the media.
Cameroon, as well as other regional countries, has been the target of attacks by Boko Haram militants.
The African country has joined up in an 8,700-strong regional force with soldiers from Chad, Niger, Nigeria, and Benin, to eradicate the Takfiri militant group.
The Boko Haram militancy began in 2009 with the aim of toppling the central government in Nigeria.
At least 17,000 people have been killed and more than 2.5 million made homeless since then.
Boko Haram has pledged allegiance to Daesh, which is wreaking havoc in Syria and Iraq.— PressTV.
Online Reporter