Hundreds Killed as Boko Haram Crackdown Leads to Cameroon Massacre

Over 100 Killed in North Cameroon Town

The anti-Boko Haram coalition in the region around northeastern Nigeria are claiming major successes, but the death tolls continue to mount, after the Chad Army claimed over 200 Boko Haram fighters killed on Tuesday in northeast Nigeria, chasing others into Cameroon.

But fighters don’t just go into Cameroon without doing anything, and reports out of the border town of Fotokol say that Boko Haram fighters arrived Wednesday morning, and went house-to-house, massacring over 100 people.

Chad and Cameroon have both contributed thousands of troops to the anti-Boko Haram battle, and while they occasionally claim gaudy kill counts in attacks, it doesn’t seem to be doing anything to slow Boko Haram’s massacres.

If anything, the attacks on the group seem to be riling them up, and then forcing them into moving into other areas, where they take it out on the civilians in those areas. Years of such offensives have left much of northeast Nigeria a total wreck, with Boko fighters going more or less wherever they please, wiping out villages on a fairly regular basis, and killing thousands.

Author: Jason Ditz

Jason Ditz is Senior Editor for Antiwar.com. He has 20 years of experience in foreign policy research and his work has appeared in The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, Forbes, Toronto Star, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Providence Journal, Washington Times, and the Detroit Free Press.