Cameroon Says 143 Boko Haram Fighters Killed In Clashes

Not less than 143 Boko Haram fighters were killed in an attack on a military camp in Cameroon on Monday, and it was the heaviest loss sustained by the Nigerian Islamist group in the country, a Cameroonian minister has said. Reuters report:

“The terrorists … lost 143 lives and important warfare equipment made up of assault rifles of various brands, heavy weapons and bullets of all calibers,” Minister of Communications Issa Tchiroma Bakary said in a statement.

“On the Cameroon side, we lost one life, the Corporal-Chef Bela Onana, as well as four wounded.”

It was not immediately possible to independently verify the toll from the fighting near the northern town of Kolofata.

Cameroon’s army determines death tolls either visually, or by counting the number of vehicles it destroys and estimating how many militants each vehicle carried, a senior official in Cameroon’s Far North region told Reuters last month.