Boko Haram kills 16 in camp for displaced people in northern Cameroon

Sources from local officials said that suspected militants from Islamist group Boko Haram killed at least 16 people and wounded seven early yesterday in a grenade attack on a camp for displaced people in northern Cameroon.

The government announced yesterday that the assailants threw a grenade into a group of sleeping and unarmed people inside the camp in the village of Nguetchewe, district mayor Medjeweh Boukar declared.

Members of the Cameroonian Rapid Intervention Force patrol on the outskirt of Mosogo in the far north region of the country where Boko Haram jihadist have been active since 2013. Image credit AFP

The camp is home to more than 800 people who have nowhere else to go.

The village is located close to the Nigerian border, and

Boukar was told by residents that 16 had died from the awful attack. The wounded were taken to a nearby hospital as soon as possible, officials said.

“The attackers arrived with a woman who carried the grenade into the camp,” Boukar announced, adding that women and children were among the innocent victims.

Over the past month, there have been twenty incursions and attacks by suspected Islamist militants in the region, as Boko Haram has been fighting for a decade to carve out an Islamic caliphate based in Nigeria, which is very much overwhelmed by the current COVID-19 pandemic.

A man is seen with his herd at a cattle market in Maroua, Cameroon, March 2, 2020. Since 2014, Boko Haram militants have attacked villages in this region on the border of Chad and Nigeria. Image credit AFP

Unfortunately, the violence is not new to neighbouring Cameroon, Niger and Chad, causing the killings and woundings of thousands of innocent people. Specifically, it has been established that the terrorist group has killed an estimated 30,000 people and displaced millions. In the same period last year, around 300 suspected Boko Haram militants swarmed onto an island on Lake Chad in Cameroon’s far north and killed 24 people, including 16 Cameroonian soldiers stationed at military outposts.