Yaounde, Cameroon. – Cameroon villagers living in bordering Nigeria are living in fear especially when darkness falls.
“When night falls, we tremble. We don’t sleep,” said a Cameroonian policeman from a far-northern border town, on condition of anonymity.
The Nigeria-born Islamist Boko Haram group have increased the number of raids in northern Cameroon where they have murdered and stolen with impunity despite military efforts to clamp down on their bloody insurgency.
At the weekend one local police officer was killed during an attack on Nariki village situated 500 metres from Boko Haram`s Nigerian stronghold of Tarmoa.
Due to the fact there is no buffer zone separating the two countries, militants easily use Cameroon to launch attacks on Nigeria since the border between the two countries is porous.
Cameroon town of Amchide is now a hotbed for Boko Haram fighters, its also used as a hub for trafficking to fund their recruitment.
Countries in West Africa have strengthened their operations to fight against Boko Haram since the kidnapping of more than 200 Chibok Nigerian girls.
The army claims to have killed many militants in recent weeks and suspected members and collaborators have been arrested and sent to the capital, Yaounde.
Cameroon’s elite Rapid Intervention Battalion (BIR) recently destroyed one Boko Haram camp during a foray across the border into Tarmoa, said the second officer.
Supported by international governments, they have also targeted the Sambisa forest near the shared border where Nigerian authorities believe the kidnapped schoolgirls may still be hidden in the militants’ camps.
On July 10 two Cameroon shepherds were killed and 200 cattle were stolen by militants during a raid in the village of Bame about 10 kilometres from the Nigerian border.
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