FOTOKOL, CAMEROON – It is bad enough when one country has to deal with an endemic terrorist threat: when it spreads next door things can go from bad to worse.
If you follow terrorism at all you cannot but have come across the Nigerian Islamist terrorist group Boko Haram, which is a phrase in one of that country’s hundreds of languages (Hausa) which translates awkwardly to ‘Western education is sinful/forbidden’. I hope it sounds better in Hausa!
This particularly nasty organisation has been terrorising much of northern Nigeria for over a decade. Its members have killed thousands and disrupted the lives of hundreds of thousands. Furthermore, despite annual boasts by a series of Nigerian presidents that the extremists are ‘on the ropes’, they are as of the time of writing still carrying out attacks on a weekly basis.
Of late, Boko Haram has not limited its campaign of mayhem, massacres and kidnappings to Nigeria but has been spreading its violence into neighbouring lands such as Chad. And Cameroon.
On this day in 2015
Boko Haram terrorists killed at least 90 people in an attack on the Cameroonian town of Fotokol, on the border with Nigeria. Another 150 were injured. The Islamist terrorists attacked civilians in their homes and in the town’s mosque, setting many buildings on fire.
Boko Haram inflicted so much damage here this morning. They have killed dozens of people.
Town resident
Boko Haram may think that Western education is haram (forbidden) in Islam but they have absolutely no compunction in committing mass murder, which I am pretty sure is actually haram in the faith they claim to espouse.
