Suspected Boko Haram militants kill 15 in northern Cameroon

Suspected militants from Islamist group Boko Haram killed 15 people and wounded six others in a grenade attack on a camp for displaced people in northern Cameroon on Sunday, a security source and a local official told Reuters.

In the early hours, assailants threw a grenade into a group of sleeping people inside the camp in the village of Nguetchewe, said district mayor, Medjeweh Boukar. The camp is home to around 800 people, he said.

The village is located in the Mozogo district, close to the Nigerian border in the Far North region.

Boukar was informed by residents that 15 had died. A security official confirmed the attack and the death toll. The wounded were taken to a nearby hospital, they said.

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

Over the past month there have been twenty incursions and attacks by suspected Islamist militants, Boukar said.

Boko Haram has been fighting for a decade to carve out an Islamic caliphate based in Nigeria.

The violence, which has cost the lives of 30 000 people and displaced millions more, has frequently spilled over into neighbouring Cameroon, Niger and Chad.

In June 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.