Update: Boko Haram killed soldier, Commissioner, others

Apparently in response to threats from Cameroon’s president, Paul Biya, Boko Haram has once more attacked on Cameroon soil, this time in Zegague locality in the Far North region of the country.

They launched the attacks, Wednesday August 6 at about 2pm; three days after the head of state vowed that the Cameroon army was going to stop them and boasted of reinforced security in the northern part of the country.

The Senior Divisional Officer for the Logon and Chari division under whose jurisdiction the attacked village is situated confirmed the attack on the 8pm news over state radio. He said causalities had been recorded on both sides.

Reports say a soldier of the Rapid Intervention Battalion elite unit of the Cameroonian forces was killed, alongside a police commissioner. Some six truck drivers plying Cameroon and some neighbouring countries were reportedly killed in the attack while the insurgents took along with them, one child and vehicles and they fled helter-skelter from soldiers of the Cameroon army who outweighed them in the confrontation.

The attack is coming less than two weeks after a deadly one staged by the same terror group in Bagarem neighbourhood in Kolofata, Far North region. During the attack, several soldiers and civilians were killed while the wife of the vice prime minister was kidnapped alongside the Mayor of the Kolofata municipality.

Conflicting figures have been given about the number of deaths and abducted persons, while an official statement from the Ministry of Defence is still awaited.

Sources say a team of soldiers from the Cameroon army and boko haram assailants met on August 1, at about 4pm in Kamouna, specifically in Hile-Halifa after the Kolofata attack and exchange corpses of their comrades who were killed in the Bargaram confrontation.

During the meeting which is said to have been organised by the mayor of Fotokol, the Boko Haram delegation handed over 12 corpses to the Cameroon delegation which was made up of two Kotoko and two Arab-chaos. Ten other dead bodies were reportedly abandoned on the battlefield where both sides had exchanged gun fire for two days.

Cameroon security forces are said to have rejected an offer by the terrorists to return the armed forces vehicles in exchange of one insurgent who was detained in Kousseri.

French news agency, APF reported yesterday that a police source hinted that the Nigerian Islamic sect has recruited hundreds of Cameroonian youths, trained them and brainwashed them.

The agency report stated that the police commissioner who spoke off the record said that the Vice Prime Minister whose wife was abducted by the terror group revealed to them, that he has a list of about 450 young Cameroonians who have been recruited into the sect.

Traditional authorities, police sources and a close aid to the vice prime minister confirmed reports that about 200 of the insurgents who attacked Kolofata were dressed in Cameroon army attire.

They also told APF that a good number of them were boys from the locality. The traditional rulers simply claimed that their kids were drugged and manipulated, but other contradicting reports say, apart from the money paid to the new recruits, huge sums of money were given to their families.