Boko Haram fighters from Nigeria on Sunday kidnapped at least 60 people in a new attack in northern Cameroon in which some people were killed, police said.<\/p>\n
The militants \u201cburst into two villages in the Tourou area\u2026 They torched houses and left with around 60 people. Most of them were women and children,\u201d a police officer told AFP.<\/p>\n
He said the cross-border attack had \u201cleft some people dead\u201d without giving an exact toll, adding that the Cameroon army had \u201claunched an operation\u201d in the wake of the assault.<\/p>\n
The kidnapping was the biggest in Cameroon by the Islamists who have staged a series of attacks in the country in recent months and escalated their bloody insurgency in their stronghold in northeastern Nigeria.<\/p>\n
The assault was launched after neighbouring Chad deployed troops to combat Boko Haram both in Cameroon and Nigeria.<\/p>\n
In Nigeria the Chadian troops are seeking to recapture the strategic city of Baga, on the shores of Lake Chad, which straddles the borders of Chad, Nigeria, Niger and Cameroon and which fell to the Islamists early this month.<\/p>\n
Many say the assault on Baga could be Boko Haram\u2019s deadliest. Satellite pictures released by Amnesty and Human Rights Watch showed widespread destruction with around 3,700 buildings in Baga and nearby Doron Baga damaged or destroyed.<\/p>\n
Amnesty says as many as 2,000 civilians may have been massacred, but Nigeria\u2019s army objected to the \u201csensational\u201d claims and said that the death toll in Baga was about 150.<\/p>\n
Some 400 Chadian army vehicles arrived in the Cameroonian border town of Kousseri on Saturday, and Chadian President Idriss Deby said they were \u201coperational\u201d as of Sunday.<\/p>\n
Boko Haram last Monday launched an offensive against a Cameroonian military base in Kolofata, also in the far north of the country, in which 143 \u201cterrorists\u201d and one Cameroonian soldier were killed, according to Cameroon.<\/p>\n
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