At least 16 people were injured in two simultaneous attacks at around 11:30 p.m. when “several unidentified terrorists, including two suicide bombers, broke into Nguetchewe village to perpetrate acts of violence and atrocities”, Cameroon’s Ministry of Defence said in a statement today.

“After assaulting the members of the local vigilante committee and other civilians, some who hid in makeshift shelters, two suicide bombers chased them and activated explosive charges,” said Capitaine De Frégate Atonfack Guemo Cyrille Serge, Head of the Communication Division at Cameroon’s Ministry of Defence. “The provisional human toll of this gruesome attack is as follows: 19 civilian deaths including the two suicide bombers; and 16 injured.”

The government states that the wounded were evacuated to the Adventist Hospital in Koza, while others were referred to the Regional Hospital in Maroua, Far North Region.

“From investigations carried out and exploitation of the witnesses of this tragedy, it is quite clear that it was a terrorist attack involving suicide bombers,” Capitaine De Frégate Atonfack Guemo said but did not call out Boko Haram. “The investigation opened by local administrative authorities and defence and security forces will determine the details of this despicable attack.”

Cameroon-Info.Net recalls that eleven persons died and 26 others were injured when jihadist fighters belonging to the Boko Haram group active in Nigeria launched an attack in the afternoon of Monday, January 6, 2020, in Fotokol.

The bloody attack took place on the bridge over the River El Beid that links Fotokol, a locality in the Logone and Chari Division of Cameroon’s Far North Region, to Gambaru, a village in Nigeria.

Saturday’s twin-bombings appear to be the bloodiest Boko Haram attack in Cameroon since that of June 2019 in which 16 soldiers of the country’s defence forces were killed when the jihadist fighters attacked Darak, a locality in the Far North Region.

Last year’s incident took place in the night of Sunday, June 9 to Monday, June 10, when 300 heavily armed fighters of the Boko Haram terrorist group attacked Darak in the Logone and Chari Division of the Far North Region, Beti Assomo Joseph, Cameroon’s Minister Delegate at the Presidency of the Republic in charge of Defence said in a statement at the time.

During the said attack, a riposte by Cameroon’s Defence Forces attached to Sector No. 1 of the Multinational Joint Task Force of the Lake Chad Basin resulted in a fierce gun exchange that lasted for several hours.

After taking control of the situation, the government said 16 soldiers were shot and killed, while eight others were injured. On the part of civilians, eight were killed and one wounded.

The defence minister said 64 Boko Haram fighters were neutralized (killed), eight captured and many others wounded as they fled while three heavy-duty machines belonging to the assailants were destroyed in last year’s Darak attack.

Boko Haram's decade-long uprising to establish a hardline Islamic state in Nigeria's northeast, which has killed more than 27,000 people and left 1.8 million homeless, spilled into neighboring Niger, Chad, and Cameroon.

An anti-Boko Haram force combining soldiers from Chad, Cameroon, Niger, and Nigeria has since been set up but has failed to rout the group from the restive Lake Chad region.

On Saturday, April 27, 2019, the same Jihadists from Nigeria's Boko Haram killed at least four people and badly wounded four others in an attack on Kofia, a Cameroonian island on Lake Chad, an official source had told AFP.

The attackers also destroyed part of a military post and vandalized shops in the attack late Saturday, the source said, adding three civilians and one soldier were killed.

The jihadist group has stepped up attacks in Cameroon and neighboring countries. Earlier in April, they were blamed for an attack that killed 11 civilians in the northern locality of Tcharkamari.