Outrage as 18 persons killed in fresh Boko Haram attack in Cameroon
Boko Haram terrorists have attacked a site hosting 800 internally displaced people near the village of Nguetchewe in Northern Cameroon, leaving 18 persons dead.
The UN Refugee Agency condemned the attack, saying that these attacks as well as those in Nigeria and other countries in the Sahel region are going mostly unnoticed by a world focused on the novel coronavirus pandemic.
In a separate statement issued in New York, the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef) said preliminary reports indicated that 10 children were among those killed and five were injured.
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Daily Times had reported that the United States had raised the alarm that the Al-Qaeda and ISIS insurgent groups have started penetrating the northwestern part of Nigeria and looking to expand further south.
The assailants threw an explosive device, believed to be a grenade, into the makeshift camp while people were sleeping, All Africa news reports.
“This attack follows a significant rise in violent incidents in Cameroon’s Far-North Region in July, including looting and kidnapping by Boko Haram and other armed groups active in the region,” UNHCR spokesperson Babar Baloch told journalists at an August 4 online briefing by the UN in Geneva.
Cameroon’s Far North region lies between Nigeria’s Borno and Adamawa states and Lake Chad. It currently hosts 321,886 internally displaced Cameroonians and 115,000 Nigerian refugees, Baloch explained.
