Cameroonian soldiers have launched further attacks against Boko Haram insurgents, shelling one of the sect’s camps inside Nigeria.
The Cameroonian soldiers launched the attack across the Nigerian border and killed many of the insurgents, a security official stated on Thursday.
The Agence France-Presse quoted the source to have said that the Cameroonian troops shelled the camp on Wednesday evening, two days after the Islamist group had seized control of Gamboru Ngala, a town located at the border with Cameroon.
“It was tanks stationed on the frontier at Fotokol (on Cameroon’s side of the border) that shelled the camp on the other side.
“Seen from Fotokol this morning, Gamboru looks empty and smells of death. Nobody knows how many Boko Haram members were killed, but it is obvious that many were,” the French news agency quoted the anonymous source as saying.
The shelling was confirmed by a local police officer.
“These were abandoned houses that they have occupied since they entered Gamboru. We think they still control the town because there are many of them and they didn’t all gather in the same place,” he said.
Calmness had been restored to Fotokol by Wednesday, following days of panic as residents and Nigerian security forces fled from the Boko Haram attack on Gamboru.
Boko Haram has faced minimal resistance from the military as it has stepped up attacks across North-East Nigeria, where it wants to create a hard-line Islamic state.
After clashes in Gamboru Ngala, Nigeria’s army had dismissed reports that the soldiers had fled but that they had been “charging through the borders in a tactical manoeuvre” and found themselves on Cameroonian soil.
The Boko Haram fighters crossed the border into Cameroon earlier this week, after attacking a military base and police station in Nigeria and apparently sending some 480 Nigerian troops retreating across the frontier.
Between Monday and Tuesday, Cameroonian troops killed 27 Boko Haram elements during an attack in an area near Fotokol in the far north.
A Cameroonian soldier in the region said the insurgents had been pushed back into Nigeria, with calm returning to the area on Wednesday.
In recent weeks, Boko Haram, which is seeking to carve out a de facto Islamic state in the north, has stepped up attacks in Cameroon, leading the country to increase deployments along its jungle border.
