YAOUNDE: Suspected Boko Haram fighters from Nigeria kidnapped around 80 people, many of them children, and killed three others on Sunday in a cross-border attack on villages in northern Cameroon, army and government officials said.

The kidnappings are among the largest abductions on Cameroonian soil since the militants began expanding their zone of operations across the border last year.

“According to our initial information, around 30 adults, most of them herders, and 50 young girls and boys aged between 10 and 15 years were abducted,” a senior army officer deployed to northern Cameroon said.

‘Fifty girls, boys among those kidnapped’

He said the early-morning attack had targeted the village of Mabass and several other villages along the porous border with Nigeria. Soldiers intervened and exchanged fire with the raiders for around two hours, he added.

Government spokesman Issa Tchiroma confirmed the attack, in which he said three people had been killed, as well as the kidnappings, but was not able to say with certainty how many people had been taken in the raid. Around 80 homes were destroyed, he said.

The assault was launched after neighbouring Chad deployed troops to combat Boko Haram both in Cameroon and Nigeria.

In Nigeria the Chadian troops are seeking to recapture the strategic city of Baga, on the shores of Lake Chad, which straddles the borders of Chad, Nigeria, Niger and Cameroon and which fell to the militants early this month. Many say the assault on Baga could be Boko Haram’s deadliest. Satellite pictures released by Amnesty and Human Rights Watch showed widespread destruction with around 3,700 buildings in Baga and nearby Doron Baga damaged or destroyed.

Amnesty says as many as 2,000 civilians may have been massacred, but Nigeria’s army objected to the “sensational” claims and said that the death toll in Baga was about 150.

Some 400 Chadian army vehicles arrived in the Cameroonian border town of Kousseri on Saturday, and Chadian President Idriss Deby said they were “operational” as of Sunday.

Boko Haram last Monday launched an offensive against a Cameroonian military base in Kolofata, also in the far north of the country, in which 143 terrorists and one Cameroonian soldier were killed, according to Cameroon.

Published in Dawn, January 19th, 2015

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