Police in Cameroon have said that Boko Haram militants from neighboring Nigeria have crossed into the country to carry out an attack that has left 10 people dead and dozen others injured.
The attack was said to have happened in a remote village of Zigague in northern Cameroon near the border with Nigeria. Nine passenger buses were said to have come under intense gunfire from the militants who had mounted road blocks in the area. A soldier was among those dead while the son of a local chief was also kidnapped.
“A group of people we think are linked with Boko Haram made an incursion this afternoon in Zigague. They blocked the road and opened fire,” an anonymous police officer told the Agence France Presse news agency.
Boko Haram has stepped up cross-border attacks into Cameroon in recent weeks as a result of the Cameroonian government commitment to help the Nigerian government fight them.
Cameroon, Nigeria, Chad and Niger agreed last week to form a 2,800-strong regional force to tackle the militants across the region and analysts say this has infuriated Boko Haram to stage attacks in Cameroon.
Last month, Boko Haram abducted the wife of Cameroon deputy Prime Minister’s wife and her maid in the northern Cameroonian town of Kolofata.
A local religious leader and the town’s mayor were also reportedly to have been abducted along with the deputy Prime Minister’s wife. Four people were also left dead.
Meanwhile, back home in Nigeria, a nurse who treated Nigeria’s first Ebola victim died of the virus yesterday in Lagos.
The nurse had helped care for Patrick Sawyer, a 40-year-old Liberian-American civil servant who last month visited Nigeria from Liberia. Liberia is one of three countries in West Africa hit badly by the Ebola virus.
Nigeria’s Health Minister, Onyebuchi Chukwu told reporters in the capital Abuja that five new cases have been recorded in the country and that Ebola is now a national emergency in Nigeria.
“Yesterday the first known Nigerian to die of Ebola was recorded. This was one of the nurses that attended to the Liberian. The other five newly confirmed cases are being treated at an isolation ward, this is now a National Emergency”, he said.
The total death toll from the Ebola outbreak has now reached 932 after another 45 patients died between 2 and 4 August, according to the World Health Organization.
Ebola is a deadly fever which causes an extremely severe disease in humans and in non-human primates in the form of viral hemorrhagic fever. Symptoms include diarrhea, vomiting, high fever, general weakness, organ failure and heavy bleeding.
There is no known cure for Ebola currently but researchers in the US are still testing various drugs to find a possible cure for the disease.
Two American health workers who contracted Ebola in West Africa are said to be responding positively to treatment after being given a “secret serum” known as ZMapp.
But the drug is yet to be assessed for its safety on humans and health workers say is good news in finding a lasting cure for the disease now and the future.
Issaka Adams / NationalTurk Africa News
Writer’s Email Address: Adamsisska@googlemail.com
[adrotate group=”15″]
