The latest in a string of suicide bomber attacks from Boko Haram killed ten people and wounded at least twelve others in the town of Fotokol, Cameroon on Saturday. The UK Metro cites some other sources that say nine were killed, and specifies that the location of the attack was actually a village called Nigue near Fotokol.
CNN notes that Fotokol, which is near the Nigerian border, has been a frequent target of attacks for the ISIS-affiliated Nigerian terrorist gang, with one especially deadly gun and knife rampage killing over 400 people last January.
“The attacks have happened despite a multinational military force of 8,700 people set up to fight the insurgents. Boko Haram attacks in Nigeria, Cameroon, Chad and Niger had claimed the lives of at least 3,500 people from January to September, according to Amnesty International,” writes CNN.
However, the UK Daily Mail notes that this force is not considered fully operational yet. It is scheduled to receive military supplies and training from the United States.
Their grim toll of 6,644 dead for 2014 made Boko Haram more lethal than ISIS that year, according to the Institute for Economics and Peace. Boko Haram reportedly swore fealty to the Islamic State and its “caliph,” Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, in March 2015. The group formally changed its name to the “Islamic State West Africa Province” in March.
The Institute for Economics and Peace report also notes that Boko Haram has been moving away from targeting opposing religious figures and murdering more civilians, with an 11 percent decrease in the deaths of the former accompanied by a 172 percent increase in the number of civilian casualties, according to the Daily Mail.
Like ISIS, Boko Haram seeks to implement strict Islamic law through terrorism, and it has been disturbingly successful at recruiting disaffected youth to its cause. CNN quotes the head of Cameroon’s counter-terrorism force, Col. Joseph Nourna, saying “there is no doubt that youths in Cameroon’s Far North region are joining Boko Haram.”