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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