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 Boko Haram insurgents, who have been attacking villages and
towns inside Cameroon for two years, massacring and abducting civilians.
In
the past fortnight, an unprecedented string of five suicide bombings by
Boko Haram in Cameroon has claimed dozens of lives, including 33 people
killed by teenage girls in three attacks on the market town of Maroua.
Since Sunday, seven people were slain in village raids, three of whom were beheaded, according to local security sources.
Cameroon
has joined a regional campaign alongside Chad, Niger and Nigeria itself
to battle Boko Haram, which has killed at least 15,000 people since
2009 in the name of founding an Islamic caliphate.
Several regions of the west
African country have also banned the full Islamic veil after two women
dressed in the religious garment blew themselves up in Fotokol, killing
10 civilians and a soldier from neighbouring Chad.
- Veils confiscated -
On
Monday, authorities confiscated 600 Islamic veils in the border city of
Kousseri, across the Chari River from the Chadian capital N'Djamena, a
police official said.
"We confiscated the veils worn by women on the streets," he added.
Motorcycles -- the jihadists' favoured form of transport -- are also banned in the town's markets.
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.
Nigeria's
small western neighbour, Benin, has been sitting in on high-level
military talks and will be a part of the task force, to be based in
N'Djamena.
The Chadian army
is engaged in a major military operation against Boko Haram forces that
have fallen back on the many islands of Lake Chad, a key location where
the borders of Cameroon, Chad, Niger and Nigeria converge.
Source: AFP
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