Boko Haram, the name of the Islamist group returned to the front of the scene with horror. Last Wednesday, while all attention was focused on the terrorist attacks in France, Nigerian Islamists again sowed terror in the Baga area on Nigerian shores of Lake Chad.
The Islamist group launched its first assault on Baga January 3, before returning several days later to completely raze the city and a dozen surrounding villages.
Local officials reported a large number of deaths but no record could not be confirmed. Some 20,000 people fled to Maiduguri, capital of Borno State, less than 200 km to the south or to neighboring countries, according to the rescue.
More than a week after having stormed the commercial hub of the Northeast, and "there are bodies everywhere" in the city, reported a resident Monday.
Boko Haram also multiplies the attacks in the northeast. Two female suicide bombers blew themselves up Sunday in a market, killing four people in Potiskum. An attack marked the spirits Saturday in Maiduguri: a bomb placed on a 10 year old girl left at least 19 dead.
The Nigerian under-equipped army is totally outdated and, this weekend, she called for international cooperation against the jihadists who want to establish a strict application of Sharia, and proclaimed a caliphate in the northeast.
And contagion threatens neighboring countries. Boko Haram is also currently conducting raids on the extreme north of neighboring Cameroon. Monday, intense fighting erupted around a military camp in Kolofata, about ten kilometers from the border between Cameroonian soldiers to hundreds of Islamists from neighboring Nigeria. According to the Cameroonian government, "143 terrorists" and a soldier were killed while a major war arsenal was seized.
This is the first major attack in the far north of Cameroon since the leader of the Islamist group, Abubakar Shekau, has in a video posted on YouTube in early January, warned the Cameroonian President Paul Biya .
Cameroon has long been regarded by Nigeria as the weak link in the fight against Nigerian Islamist them, using its territory as a base and as a center of transit of arms. In December, Yaoundé brought in for the first time its air force against Boko Haram.
Currently, more than 2,000 troops are deployed in the far north of Cameroon, but military officials estimate that about 30,000 the number of troops it would take to better control the area where the border with Nigeria is very porous.
For its part the critical attitude Cameroon Nigeria and the international community to the progression of Boko Haram. Nigerian soldiers are accused of deserting their positions abandoning their weapons which are recovered by Nigerian Islamists. And if the UN condemned the situation in the far north of Cameroon she kept acting for now.
In May 2014, Nigeria and three neighboring countries (Cameroon, Niger and Chad) adopted in Paris under the aegis of France, a response plan against the Islamic sect. But the plan is slow to develop, and the Cameroonian president complained since many times, the lack of action from its neighbors deal with the Islamist threat.
The Boko Haram insurgency and its repression by security forces left more than 13,000 dead and 1.5 million displaced in five years in the predominantly Muslim north of Nigeria.
