Cameroon will send about 2,000 military
reinforcements to the north to fight Boko Haram, the Nigerian jihadist movement
behind bloody cross-border raids and suicide bombings, state television said
Tuesday.
“Almost 2,000 extra soldiers will be deployed in the
Extreme North region,” on the border with northeastern Nigeria, according to
the report on Cameroon Radio-Television, which gave no timetable for the
operation.
The reinforcements will raise to 8,500 the number of
troops deployed to take on the Boko Haram insurgents, who have attacked
villagers and towns inside Cameroon for two years, massacring and abducting
civilians.
In the past fortnight, an unprecedented series of
five suicide bombings by Boko Haram has claimed dozens of lives, including 33
people killed by teenage girls in three attacks on the market town of Maroua.
Since Sunday, seven people were slain in village
raids, three of whom were beheaded, according to local security sources.
Cameroon has joined a regional campaign alongside
Chad, Niger and Nigeriaitself to battle Boko Haram, which has killed at least
15,000 people since 2009 in the name of founding an Islamic caliphate.
Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari will travel to
Cameroon on Wednesday for talks with President Paul Biya in a bid “to build a
strong regional alliance to confront Boko Haram,” Buhari’s spokesman Garba
Shehu told AFP.
After more than seven months of delay, the
deployment of a long-awaited Multinational Joint Task Force of 8,700 soldiers,
police and civilian personnel has been announced for the end of July.
Nigeria’s small western neighbour, Benin, has been
sitting in on high-level military talks and will be a part of the task force,
to be based in Chad’s capital N’Djamena.
The Chadian army is engaged in a major military
operation against Boko Haram forces that have fallen back on the many islands
of Lake Chad, a key location where the borders of Cameroon, Chad, Niger and
Nigeria converge.
- See more at:
http://www.vanguardngr.com/2015/07/cameroon-deploys-2000-extra-troops-to-fight-boko-haram/#sthash.wiXz49hf.dpuf
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