(NIGERIA) Cameroun has carried out its first air strikes against militant Islamist group Boko Haram, after it overran a military base and attacked five villages, officials have said.
The military repelled the coordinated attacks and regained control of the base, they added.
At least 41 militants and one soldier died in the attack, the officials said.
The Nigeria-based group is increasingly carrying out cross-border raids, threatening Cameroun’s security.
The latest fighting was the most intense, lasting for three days along several fronts, reported the BBC from Cameroun’s capital Yaounde.
About 1,000 militants attacked five villages, including Amchide, and seized the nearby Achigachia military base, army spokesman, Lieutenant Colonel Didier Badjeck, told Reuters news agency.
“After that, the head of state ordered the air force to carry out strikes. With the bombardment, the fighters were forced to decamp from Achigachia,” he said.
In a statement, Cameroun’s Information Minister Issa Tchiroma Bakary said the multiple attacks showed that Boko Haram had adopted a new strategy aimed at “distracting Camerounian troops on different fronts, making them more vulnerable in the face of the mobility and unpredictability of their attacks”.
At least 34 militants were killed after the army raided one of their bases in Cameroun, while another seven were killed in a separate clash which also claimed the life of a soldier, Bakary said, Reuters reported.
The air strikes marked “a new escalation in the Camerounian response... to multiple enemy attacks”, he added, AFP news agency reported.
Last week, Cameroun said it had dismantled a Boko Haram training camp on its territory, and had seized 84 children who were being trained there.
More than 40 of its soldiers have been killed in fighting with Boko Haram this year, according to Reuters.
Boko Haram launched its insurgency in North-eastern Nigeria in 2009, saying it wanted to overthrow the government and create an Islamic state.
It recruits mainly unemployed youth and has seized large swathes of territory in Borno State, raising fears that it could launch an assault on its main city, Maiduguri.
At least 2,000 civilians have been killed by the group in Nigeria this year.
The kidnapping of more than 200 schoolgirls by Boko Haram in April from the town of Chibok in Borno sparked international outrage.
-THISDAY-
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