UN backs CMR,NGA against Boko Haram

The United Nations Security Council welcomed plans byCameroon, Nigeria and its neighbors to meet Tuesday to discuss setting up a regional military force to battle the Islamist militant group, Boko Haram.

“The Security Council underlines the need to bring perpetrators, organizers, financiers and sponsors of these reprehensible acts of terrorism to justice in accordance with international law and relevant Security Council resolutions,” Cristián Barros Melet, Chile’s Permanent Representative to the UN and President of the Council for the month of January, said Monday, according to a UN statement.

The meeting, to be held Tuesday in Niamey, Niger, will be attended by officials from the region. Chadian President Idriss Deby told state radio a day ago that his government is deploying 2,000 elite troops in Cameroon to fight Boko Haram.

The militant group is increasingly targeting Cameroon’s north as it steps up its attacks ahead of Nigeria’s presidential elections in February. Boko Haram killed three people and abducted at least 50 others including women and children in the northern town of of Mokolo on Jan. 18, Communications Minister Issa Tchiroma Bakary said by phone.

The group’s leader, Abubakar Shekau, this month threatened Cameroonian President Paul Biya in a video posted on YouTube. Cameroon and Nigeria share a 1,690-kilometer (1,050-mile) border that stretches from the Atlantic Ocean to Lake Chad in the north.