Cameroon, Chad presidents vow to take Boko Haram on

The leaders of Cameroon and Chad have reiterated their resolve to jointly face head on Nigeria's Boko Haram Islamic militants.

The Islamist extremists often operate across the Nigerian borders into the two countries.

But Presidents Paul Biya and Idriss Deby Itno did not clearly state how the crusade against the sect, which they said was the main threat to peace and security in the region, would be carried out.

The two met in Cameroonian capital Yaoundé on Thursday. A statement after the meeting “prescribed the strengthening of cooperation to fight cross-border crime" but did not give more information.

The leaders were meeting less than a week after an African leaders’ conference in Paris last Saturday and which they attended agreed to wage war on Boko Haram.

Cameroon and Chad, labelled as Boko Haram’s rear bases, share boundaries with north-eastern Nigeria where the insurgents’ main campsites are found. The latest in the group’s string of raids on Cameroonian soil was on the eve of the Paris pledge.

The sect raided a Chinese engineering firm’s camp in Waza, in the country’s Far North Region, near Nigeria's north-eastern border, taking 10 Chinese nationals hostage and killing one soldier.

New attention on the group’s multitude of atrocities dating back to since 2009 has been due in large part to global calls for Nigeria to rescue 270 schoolgirls it seized in Chibok in Nigeria’s Borno State.

The United Nations on Thursday officially declared Boko Haram a terrorist group linked to Al-Qaeda and urged members to freeze assets linked to the group and place embargos on arms destined to it.

Eighty US military personnel this week began operating an unmanned and unarmed drone deployed to Chad to help locate the schoolgirls.