Two female suicide bombers killed at least 10 people and injured 12 at a mosque on Cameroon’s northern border with Nigeria, the Far North Region’s governor, Midjiyawa Bakari, said Wednesday.
Cameroon’s Far North Region flanks northeast Nigeria, heartland of the jihadist terror group Boko Haram, and has become a frequent target for the group’s insurgents.
There was no immediate confirmation that Boko Haram was behind the latest attacks. But the terror group has also been expanding its operations from its Nigerian base to other neighboring countries, including Niger, Benin and Chad.
This is despite the existence of a multinational military force of 8,700 soldiers set up to fight the insurgents.
Boko Haram has previously used female suicide bombers in its attacks. In November, five members of the same family and a soldier were killed when two female suicide bombers struck in the town of Dabanga, near the Nigerian border. Hours later, five others were killed in the village of Gouzoudou, also near the Nigerian border.
A week earlier, at least six people were killed by suicide bombers in the Cameroonian town of Fotokol.
Military officials blamed Boko Haram for all three attacks.
Bombings, kidnappings
Boko Haram aims to institute Sharia, or Islamic law. It has carried out a campaign of terror in northern Nigeria, killing thousands, taking hundreds captive, and occupying swaths of territory in Borno state.
It has perpetrated bombings of marketplaces, churches, mosques and other public gathering spots.
Kidnappings are one of the group’s hallmarks, the most notorious coming in April 2014, when it abducted more than 200 girls from a school in the northeastern Nigerian city of Chibok.
In an annual report released in November, the Global Terrorism Index, Boko Haram was listed as the world’s deadliest terror group of the previous year, responsible for 6,644 deaths.
ISIS, in second place, was responsible for 6,073 killings in 2014, the report said.
