Two female bombers were thwarted as they tried to stage a double suicide attack in Cameroon’s Far North Thursday, with one blowing herself up and the second shot dead by troops, security sources said.
“At around 7:30 am (0630 GMT), two young suicide bombers entered the town of Mora” with the aim of blowing themselves up, but they were identified, a military official told AFP.
“When we tried to arrest them, one blew herself up, wounding the other,” he said, indicating that the second bomber was shot dead by soldiers from an elite unit fighting on the frontlines against Islamist Boko Haram militants who are based in northeastern Nigeria.
Thursday is market day in Mora, a town near the Nigerian border which is home to the headquarters of a multi-national force fighting Boko Haram that groups troops from Benin, Cameroon, Chad, Niger and Nigeria.
On Monday evening, another female bomber was shot dead by troops in the same area as she tried to stage an attack in Kolofata, a town just 21 kilometres (13 miles) away.
On August 21, three civilians were killed in a suicide attack on Mora.
After several weeks of relative calm, the Far North region has been hit by a surge of violence blamed on Boko Haram, with six soldiers killed on Monday night in a militant attack on a Lake Chad army base.
Boko Haram, which is seeking to impose strict Islamic sharia law in Nigeria’s mainly-Muslim north, has killed at least 20,000 people and left more than 2.6 million homeless in its six-year insurgency.
Cameroon has been fighting the group since 2014, and operations by the joint regional force have helped the Nigerian military retake swathes of territory from the insurgents, although the jihadist group still poses a security threat to civilians.
Source: AFP
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