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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