Several groups of Boko Haram militants descended on a camp for internally displaced people in Nguetchewe village, Far North Cameroon, killing at least 18 Christians as they slept in a stealth night assault on Sunday 2 August.
The rifle and machete armed jihadists injured several others as they ransacked houses in an hour-long attack in Mozogo district, Mayo Tsanaga department. The bodies of some of the victims were found dismembered. A local witness said police intervention had “limited the massacre” before the terrorists sped across the border to Nigeria.
It is thought the terrorists were attempting to continue their attack with an assault on a Christian mission in the village, from which a minister and other church workers had been kidnapped by Boko Haram in 2013.
At least 28 Christians were murdered in a wave of Boko Haram attacks from November 2019 to January 2020. At least seven were killed when a gang of 300 Boko Haram militants raided five Christian villages in Touru, Moskota and Kozo districts in January 2020. Seven Christians were killed and 21 children and young adults were kidnapped in Mayo Sava district in December. In November, a 12-year old Christian schoolboy was hacked to death when he resisted militants’ attempt to abduct him as a “child soldier” during a raid on Tourou district. Earlier the same month pioneering pastor, David Mokoni, and a hearing-impaired Christian boy were killed when militants attacked their church in Moskota village.
Boko Haram violence has intensified in Far North Cameroon, which borders the Islamist terror group’s bases around Lake Chad and north-eastern Nigeria, since 2014.
