By BosNewsLife Africa Service
ABUJA/YAOUNDE (BosNewsLife)– Islamic militants fleeing a three-nation offensive took revenge Thursday, February 5, by shooting and burning to death as many as 100 people while attacking churches and other sites in northern Cameroon, officials said.
Some 800 fighters of Nigeria’s feared Boko Haram group were seen entering the Cameroon border town of Fotokol where they “burned churches, mosques and villages and slaughtered youth who resisted joining them to fight Cameroonian forces,” explained Cameroon’s Information Minister Issa Tchiroma Bakari.
The attacks, which also injured some 500 people, came amid a major regional offensive against the Islamic group after it kidnapped hundreds of Christian schoolgirls and women and killed thousands in neighbouring northern Nigeria.
Boko Haram, or ‘Western education is sinful’ also launched increasingly bloody cross-border raids as part of its efforts to establish a strict Islamic state.
LOOTING LIVESTOCK
The insurgents from Nigeria also looted livestock and food in the fighting that began Wednesday and was continuing Thursday, Bakari told reporters.
Boko Haram is using civilians as shields, making it difficult to confront them although reinforcements have arrived in Fotokol, said military spokesman Col. Didier Badjeck.
Thursday’s revenge attacks came after hundreds of insurgents were killed a day earlier, compared to the loss of 13 Chadian and 6 Cameroonian troops fighting them, according to Cameroonian Defense Minister Edgard Alain Mebe Ngo.
The fighting was expected to raise concerns among the embattled Christian community. Boko Haram has warned Christians to leave areas under its control or follow the group’s strict interpretation of Islam.
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