1. Skip to content
  2. Skip to main menu
  3. Skip to more DW sites
Live TV
Latest audioLatest videos
In focus
Middle EastUS election Ukraine

Cameroon hit by suicide blasts

November 21, 2015

Four female suicide bombers have blown themselves up in northern Cameroon. Authorities say the attack has left a total of 10 dead, including the attackers and a tribal chief.

https://p.dw.com/p/1HA6b
Kamerun Soldaten Anti Boko Haram
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/N. Chimtom

Security officials said Saturday that a devastating suicide attack by suspected members of the Islamist group Boko Haram struck a village in the northern reaches of Cameroon.

"The initial figures speak of 10 dead including the suicide bombers and around a dozen wounded," an unnamed Cameroonian army commander in the village of Nigue, a suburb of Fotokol town, told the Reuters news agency.

Boko Haram has waged a six-year campaign for an Islamist state in northeastern Nigeria. It has mounted numerous cross-border attacks in Cameroon, Chad, Niger and Nigeria this year.

The result is the the border region near Lake Chad into a war zone, the United Nations refugee agency warned last month.

Cameroon has joined a regional US-backed coalition deploying 8,700 troops against Boko Haram in a cross-border conflict that's displaced tens of thousands of people.

Regional governor Midjiyawa Bakari said that Saturday's bloodshed was the result of a woman detonating her suicide belt on the fringes of a village near Fotokol. He said the other three women also detonated their explosive vests, but did not kill anyone besides themselves.

jar/gsw (AFP, Reuters)