Islamic State kill scores in Lake Chad attacks
The execution of the attack affirms the growing fear that insurgent groups around the lake are receiving external support.
Dorcas Ekupe in Maroua, Far North Region
At least 12 Cameroonian soldiers were killed in a Tuesday morning attack on an army base in Wulgoy, Borno State Nigeria. Several others were wounded. The attackers are believed to have been fighters of the Islamic State of West Africa Province – a splinter faction of Boko Haram.
The Cameroonian soldiers were operating in Nigeria as part of the Multinational Joint Task Force, a pool of about 10,000 soldiers from the states in the Lake Chad basin: Cameroon, Chad, Niger and Nigeria, fighting insurgent groups in the area. Many of the groups are linked to “jihadist” causes and groups.
The execution of the Tuesday attack affirms the growing fear that insurgent groups around the lake are receiving external support. The attackers used drones to gather intelligence before launching a ground invasion into the army base where they burned vehicles and made off with ammunition.
“The advanced weaponry they increasingly have at their disposal is largely due to their apparent alliance with powerful transnational criminal entities,” said a statement from the Cameroon government after the attack.
Days before the attack, militants from the splinter group killed dozens of farmers in Tumbun Kanta and Kwatar Yobe in Nigeria “with accounts ranging between 40 and 100 dead” according to AFP. In neighbouring Niger on Friday last week, militants from the same faction attacked a mosque in Kokorou at prayer time, killed at least 44 people and wounded 13 others.
The United Nations estimates that the Boko Haram insurgency, which began in 2009, has caused 350,000 deaths in the Lake Chad region and displaced three million people.