Cameroon
will send about 2,000 military reinforcements to the north to fight Boko Haram,
the Nigerian jihadist movement behind bloody cross-border raids and suicide
bombings, state television said Tuesday.
“Almost
2,000 extra soldiers will be deployed in the Extreme North region,” on the
border with northeastern Nigeria, according to the report on Cameroon
Radio-Television, which gave no timetable for the operation.
The
reinforcements will raise to 8,500 the number of troops deployed to take on the
Boko Haram insurgents, who have attacked villagers and towns inside Cameroon
for two years, massacring and abducting civilians.
Cameroon
has joined a regional campaign alongside Chad, Niger and Nigeriaitself to
battle Boko Haram, which has killed at least 15,000 people since 2009 in the
name of founding an Islamic caliphate.
Nigerian
President Muhammadu Buhari will travel to Cameroon on Wednesday for talks with
President Paul Biya in a bid “to build a strong regional alliance to confront
Boko Haram,” Buhari’s spokesman Garba Shehu told AFP.
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