Cameroon army ‘kills 40 Boko Haram fighters

Cameroon's army claimed on
Tuesday to have killed more than 40 Boko Haram
fighters who tried to storm a strategic border
crossing from Nigeria.
Heavily armed fighters "attempted to cross the
bridge at Fotokol" in the extreme north of the
country and opened fire on Cameroonian soldiers,
the ministry of defence told state radio.
"Cameroon defence forces energetically reacted to
this assault which lasted three hours," the ministry
said, adding that one soldier was wounded by
mortar shrapnel.
There was no independent confirmation of the
battle.
Gamboru Ngala, the Nigerian town on the other side
of the bridge, fell to the Islamist extremists last
week after they reportedly overran the Nigerian
garrison there.
For several days people living in towns and villages
in northeast Nigeria recently captured by Boko
Haram have been fleeing towards Cameroon to
escape the militants.
The extremists, who have waged a bloody
insurgency for five years in northern Nigeria, seem
to have changed tactics in recent months, going
from spectacular kidnappings, massacres and
suicide attacks to attempting to conquer territory.
Cameroon's Defence Ministry said that 246 Nigerian
soldiers and customs officials who had fled
Gamboru Ngala into Cameroon to escape the Boko
Haram offensive "have left the Fotokol area under
military escort" to rejoin their units in Banki in
Nigeria.
Several hundred Nigerian soldiers abandoned
border posts further to the south along the long and
isolated border last week in face of the militants'
advance, military sources said.
The Nigerian army denied its troops had fled into
Cameroon, instead calling the retreat a "tactical
manoeuvre".