Cameroon army ‘kills 40 Boko Haram fighters’
YAOUNDÉ (AFP) – Cameroon’s army claimed on Tuesday to have killed more
than 40 Boko Haram fighters who tried to storm a strategic border
crossing from Nigeria.
Heavily armed fighters “attempted
to cross the bridge at Fotokol” in the extreme north of the country and
opened fire on Cameroonian soldiers, the ministry of defence told state
radio.
“Cameroon defence forces energetically reacted to this
assault which lasted three hours,” the ministry said, adding that one
soldier was wounded by mortar shrapnel.
There was no independent confirmation of the battle.
Gamboru Ngala, the Nigerian town on the other side of the bridge, fell
to the Islamist extremists last week after they reportedly overran the
Nigerian garrison there.
For several days people living in
towns and villages in northeast Nigeria recently captured by Boko Haram
have been fleeing towards Cameroon to escape the militants.
The
extremists, who have waged a bloody insurgency for five years in
northern Nigeria, seem to have changed tactics in recent months, going
from spectacular kidnappings, massacres and suicide attacks to
attempting to conquer territory.
Cameroon’s Defence Ministry
said that 246 Nigerian soldiers and customs officials who had fled
Gamboru Ngala into Cameroon to escape the Boko Haram offensive “have
left the Fotokol area under military escort” to rejoin their units in
Banki in Nigeria.
Several hundred Nigerian soldiers abandoned
border posts further to the south along the long and isolated border
last week in face of the militants’ advance, military sources said.
The Nigerian army denied its troops had fled into Cameroon, instead calling the retreat a “tactical manoeuvre”
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