Cameroon Troops Face Boko Haram In Amchide

                                                     Police forces in Amchide

                          The once lively trading town of Amchide in the north of Cameroon became a ghost, abandoned to the army by the residents terrified of attacks by the Boko Haram insurgents.
                         After a number of raids in the past year by the insurgents from Cameroon neighbour, just across the western border, the greater part of inhabitants have fled.
Nobody cook in the courtyards of the houses of clay and brick while multi-coloured robes and children’s laughter are things of the past.
A military one dug in about 800 metres (875 yards) from the frontier and the deadly danger on the other side are the remaining human presence here.
The resident from a nearby village, Abba, said, “Before, this was a bustling town, with crowds. Chadians, Cameroonians and Nigerians came here and traded in all kinds of things.”
A lot of people in the town ran the danger of slaughter and abducting by Boko Haram for months, but the condition further worsened when the terrorists in September invaded Banki, the extension of their town on to Nigerian territory.
Boko Haram terrorists then stepped up bloody raids inside Cameroon, where they slit the throats of Christians and Muslims alike. The organisation also attacked from their positions in Nigeria.
An officer in Cameroon’s elite military Rapid Intervention Battalion (BIR by its French initials) told AFP, asking to be unnamed, “There is firing almost every day.”
Hundreds metres (yards) from the Cameroon’s elite military base, dozens of soldiers on high observant manned a forward post, some keeping a lookout behind piled sandbags. Others were on the edge to trap intruders, suspicious of the nearby savannah grass and trees that offer cover to Boko Haram insurgents.
Military operations to recapture Amchide are a task rendered harder by the complexities of the border.
“When you go into a house by a door in Cameroon, you can come out on the Nigerian side, where Islamists have many hiding places,” an official said.
Cameroon’s military notes that in the absence of “a right of pursuit” into bordering countries, it will never take out ground attacks on Nigerian territory. Meanwhile, some officers agreed that “for protection in the event of aggression”, they had the right to fire shells across the border.
In villages of the district, residents still try to live as normally as they can despite the sound of almost daily explosions and gunfire.

The Boko Haram group seeks to establish a “pure” Islamic state ruled by sharia, putting a stop to what it deems Westernization. It proposes that interaction with the Western world is forbidden, and also supports opposition to the Muslim establishment and the government of Nigeria.