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Cameroon hit by suicide blasts

November 21, 2015

Four female suicide bombers have blown themselves up in northern Cameroon. Authorities say the attack has left a total of 10 dead, including the attackers and a tribal chief.

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Kamerun Soldaten Anti Boko Haram
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/N. Chimtom

Security officials said Saturday that a devastating suicide attack by suspected members of the Islamist group Boko Haram struck a village in the northern reaches of Cameroon.

"The initial figures speak of 10 dead including the suicide bombers and around a dozen wounded," an unnamed Cameroonian army commander in the village of Nigue, a suburb of Fotokol town, told the Reuters news agency.

Boko Haram has waged a six-year campaign for an Islamist state in northeastern Nigeria. It has mounted numerous cross-border attacks in Cameroon, Chad, Niger and Nigeria this year.

The result is the the border region near Lake Chad into a war zone, the United Nations refugee agency warned last month.

Cameroon has joined a regional US-backed coalition deploying 8,700 troops against Boko Haram in a cross-border conflict that's displaced tens of thousands of people.

Regional governor Midjiyawa Bakari said that Saturday's bloodshed was the result of a woman detonating her suicide belt on the fringes of a village near Fotokol. He said the other three women also detonated their explosive vests, but did not kill anyone besides themselves.

jar/gsw (AFP, Reuters)