Cameroon sent warplanes into action on Sunday against Boko Haram
fighters for the first time, after the large force of militants crossed
the border and seized a military camp, the government said yesterday.
At least 41 militants were killed during the operation. President Paul Biya personally ordered Sunday’s air strike, which forced the insurgents to flee the camp at Assighasia, Communications Minister Issa Tchiroma Bakary said in a statement late Sunday.
“Fighter planes went into action for the first time since the start of the conflict” on the Cameroonian side of the frontier, after several months of deadly cross-border Boko Haram raids, Bakary said.
“After two strikes and heavy fire… the assailants fled the Assighasia camp… losing several fighters,” he said. Military operations were still under way, he added, saying that “the toll from combat will be released once the operational evaluation is complete”.
The coordinated assaults on five towns and villages showed a change in tactics by Boko Haram fighters, who have focused on hit-and-run raids on individual settlements in the past, Tchiroma added.
Tchiroma further explained that “units of the (Boko Haram) group attacked Makari, Amchide, Limani and Achigachia in a change of strategy which consists of distracting Cameroonian troops on different fronts, making them more vulnerable in the face of the mobility and unpredictability of their attacks.”
The Islamists briefly occupied an army camp in Achigachia after a fierce fight, but withdrew after air attacks, army spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Didier Badjeck told Reuters by phone. All the militants had now pulled back into Nigeria, Badjeck said. Both Tchiroma and Badjeck said it was too early to give full details of casualties.
The air strikes marked “a new escalation in the Cameroonian response… to multiple enemy attacks by the Boko Haram terrorist group,” the statement said, but it also sent a signal to other countries.
On October 15, Boko Haram forces equipped with a captured tank and an armoured vehicle attacked a military base at Amchide, near the border, in a raid that killed several dozen civilians and eight soldiers, according to officials.
When a French family was kidnapped in 2013, along with two Italian priests and a Canadian nun, President Biya sent major army reinforcements to confront the Islamists in “Operation Alpha”. The hostages were freed this year in Nigeria.
Some 2,000 Cameroonian troops patrol the far-north region, but security sources say that many more are needed because the area is so remote with a very porous border. Military sources accuse Nigeria’s army of failing to do enough against Boko Haram forces who have taken control of large swathes of the northeast of the country.
“Attacks on our territory come from a neighbouring country that calls itself sovereign and does nothing,” a defence ministry official in Yaounde recently told AFP, asking not to be named.
CREDIT/THE SUN
At least 41 militants were killed during the operation. President Paul Biya personally ordered Sunday’s air strike, which forced the insurgents to flee the camp at Assighasia, Communications Minister Issa Tchiroma Bakary said in a statement late Sunday.
“Fighter planes went into action for the first time since the start of the conflict” on the Cameroonian side of the frontier, after several months of deadly cross-border Boko Haram raids, Bakary said.
“After two strikes and heavy fire… the assailants fled the Assighasia camp… losing several fighters,” he said. Military operations were still under way, he added, saying that “the toll from combat will be released once the operational evaluation is complete”.
The coordinated assaults on five towns and villages showed a change in tactics by Boko Haram fighters, who have focused on hit-and-run raids on individual settlements in the past, Tchiroma added.
Tchiroma further explained that “units of the (Boko Haram) group attacked Makari, Amchide, Limani and Achigachia in a change of strategy which consists of distracting Cameroonian troops on different fronts, making them more vulnerable in the face of the mobility and unpredictability of their attacks.”
The Islamists briefly occupied an army camp in Achigachia after a fierce fight, but withdrew after air attacks, army spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Didier Badjeck told Reuters by phone. All the militants had now pulled back into Nigeria, Badjeck said. Both Tchiroma and Badjeck said it was too early to give full details of casualties.
The air strikes marked “a new escalation in the Cameroonian response… to multiple enemy attacks by the Boko Haram terrorist group,” the statement said, but it also sent a signal to other countries.
On October 15, Boko Haram forces equipped with a captured tank and an armoured vehicle attacked a military base at Amchide, near the border, in a raid that killed several dozen civilians and eight soldiers, according to officials.
When a French family was kidnapped in 2013, along with two Italian priests and a Canadian nun, President Biya sent major army reinforcements to confront the Islamists in “Operation Alpha”. The hostages were freed this year in Nigeria.
Some 2,000 Cameroonian troops patrol the far-north region, but security sources say that many more are needed because the area is so remote with a very porous border. Military sources accuse Nigeria’s army of failing to do enough against Boko Haram forces who have taken control of large swathes of the northeast of the country.
“Attacks on our territory come from a neighbouring country that calls itself sovereign and does nothing,” a defence ministry official in Yaounde recently told AFP, asking not to be named.
CREDIT/THE SUN
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