Suspected Boko Haram militants on Sunday night raided a village in northern Cameroon and killed at least 10 people, in what army and local officials said was a revenge for attacks by the country’s army.
Reuters reports a senior army source to have said that the attackers came to the village of Gouderi at 11PM local time on Sunday, and killed 11 people. It also reports two local sources to say that “about 10” had been killed.
“It looks like revenge because the army killed Boko Haram members in this village and forced others to retreat to Nigeria,” the army source said.
Cameroon’s semi-arid Far North region has been a target of Boko Haram suicide bombings and raids for eight years as the Islamist insurgency spilled over the border from Nigeria, killing 20,000 and uprooting nearly 3 million in the Lake Chad region.
The Cameroonian army has been working to fight the insurgents back, though they still manage to carry out unpredictable attacks.
It is also part of a joint West African force formed to fight the jihadist group in the Lake Chad region.
Boko Haram has for months changed tact, resorting to the use of suicide bombers, who are in many cases women and young girls.
The group has waged war in the region for close to a decade, in attempts to enforce a strict Sharia-based system of governance.
That war has killed thousands and displaced millions, especially in northeast Nigeria.
