Boko Haram attack kills 14 in northern Cameroon

YAOUNDE, Cameroon

At least 14 people have been killed in a Boko Haram attack in northern Cameroon, an official said on Friday.

“Twelve farmers from Mozogo in the Mayo Tsanaga area were killed in an attack by Boko Haram at around 1 a.m. [0000GMT],” Midjiyawa Bakari, governor of the Far North Region, told Anadolu Agency.

“Boko Haram terrorists stormed the village, firing shots in the air. Villagers fled to a park, where Boko Haram fighters brought a girl strapped with explosives,” he said.

“Twelve villagers, the young suicide bomber, and a Boko Haram terrorist were killed in the explosion, while two more people were seriously injured.”

Based in Nigeria near the Cameroonian border, Boko Haram terrorists regularly attack civilians and military posts in northern Cameroon.

Boko Haram launched a bloody insurgency in 2009 in northeastern Nigeria but later spread its atrocities to neighboring Niger, Chad, and Cameroon, prompting a military response.

More than 30,000 people have been killed and nearly 3 million displaced in a decade of Boko Haram’s terrorist activities in Nigeria, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

Violence committed by Boko Haram has affected some 26 million people in the Lake Chad region and displaced 2.6 million others, according to the UN Refugee Agency.