Boko Haram Invades Northern Cameroon, Kills 90 Civilians - Foreign Affairs

YAOUNDE, Cameroon — Boko Haram fighters have shot or
burned to death about 90 civilians and wounded 500 in
ongoing fighting in a Cameroonian border town near Nigeria,
officials in Cameroon said Thursday.

Some 800 Islamic extremists attacking the town of Fotokol
have ‘‘burned churches, mosques and villages and
slaughtered youth who resisted joining them to fight
Cameroonian forces,’’ Information Minister Issa Tchiroma
Bakari said.

The insurgents from Nigeria also looted livestock and food in
the fighting that began Wednesday and was continuing
Thursday, Bakari told The Associated Press.
Boko Haram is using civilians as shields, making it difficult
to confront them although reinforcements have arrived in
Fotokol, according to military spokesman Col. Didier
Badjeck.

Schools also have been razed by the insurgents, whose
nickname, Boko Haram, means ‘‘Western education is
forbidden’’ in the Hausa language.

Hundreds of insurgents were killed Wednesday compared to
the loss of 13 Chadian and 6 Cameroonian troops, Defense
Minister Edgard Alain Mebe Ngo said. At least 91 civilians
have been killed and most of more than 500 wounded people
cannot be immediately taken to the hospitals, he said. There
was no way to immediately confirm the account
independently.

The fighters are believed to have crossed into Cameroon
from nearby Gamboru, a Nigerian border town that had been
an extremist stronghold since November. Gamboru was
retaken earlier this week and the fighters driven out by
Chadian and Nigerian air strikes supported by Chadian
ground troops.

African Union officials on Thursday were finalizing plans for a
multinational force to fight the spreading Boko Haram
uprising, although there are questions about funding. The AU
last week authorized a 7,500-strong force from Nigeria and
its four neighbors, Cameroon, Chad, Niger and Benin.
Senior officers from the U.N. peacekeeping department are
attending the meeting in Yaounde, Cameroon’s capital, said
a U.N. official.

The Africans want U.N. Security Council approval and money
to fund the mission, said the official who spoke Wednesday
at the United Nations and insisted on anonymity because he
was not authorized to speak to the press on the meeting.
France’s President Francois Hollande said Thursday his
country is providing support with weapons, logistics and
operations for the multinational effort. At a news conference
in Paris, he stopped short of saying whether France is
actually involved in military action itself. France has a big air
base at N’Djamena, the capital of Chad, which will lead the
multinational force.

International concern has grown as Boko Haram has
increased the tempo and ferocity of its attacks just as
Nigeria is preparing for presidential and legislative elections
on Feb. 14.

Some 10,000 people were killed in Boko Haram violence last
year compared to 2,000 in the first four years of Nigeria’s
Islamic uprising, according to the Council on Foreign
Relations.