Cameroon’s President Paul Biya on October 13, 2014 vowed his government would go after the Islamist group Boko Haram “until it’s totally wiped out”. He made the promise as he received 10 Chinese and 17 Cameroonians freed last week after spending months as hostages of armed men thought to belong to Boko Haram, an anti-Western rebel group in Nigeria which has been increasingly making incursions into Cameroon.
Mr. Paul Biya, who spoke
after the release of the abducted 27 hostages comprising 17 Cameroonians and 10
Chinese said: “The Cameroonian government assures you that it will ceaselessly
continue to fight Boko Haram until it’s totally wiped out”.
Nigerian counterpart,
President Goodluck Jonathan, on his part, was confident that the activities of
insurgents and other cross-border criminals will soon be drastically curtailed
with the intensification of joint patrols, military operations and intelligence
sharing by Nigeria and neighbouring countries as agreed by their leaders in
Niamey last week.
The 27 Cameroonians and
Chinese were delivered to authorities on Friday night. The government has not
said how they were freed, but a security source told AFP that “a ransom” was
paid and around 20 imprisoned Islamists were freed in exchange.
The Chinese were seized in
May from a construction camp in Waza, near the border with Nigeria in an attack
that left one Cameroonian soldier dead. The Cameroonians — including the wife
of one of Cameroon’s deputy prime ministers — were abducted in July during two
simultaneous assaults, also blamed on Boko Haram, in which at least 15 people
died.
One of the released
Cameroonians, Seiny Boukar Lamine, told state radio, “we were in these sort of
huts in a pretty dense forest, it was in a savannah with big trees and a lot of
brush. We slept on the ground”. He said he was held with his wife and six
children.
Another former hostage
Abdouraman Seini, who survived a gunshot to his hand, told VOA he and the other
captives were forced to eat whatever was provided and at times went for days
without water to drink.
He said they lived in
miserable conditions and that they were tortured by men armed with knives and
guns. “Freedom is a good thing, I pray such a thing never happens to anyone”,
he said.
Abdouraman Seini added that
he did not see any of the more than 200 girls from Chibok, Nigeria that Boko
Haram claimed responsibility for kidnapping in April.
According to Seini “women are
separated from men in the various detention camps run by the militants in the
bush”.
Seini also told VOA he
believes it is very likely Boko Haram fighters will continue their attacks
because they are running out of food for the hundreds of fighters and the
hundreds of captives they have.
Vanguard
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