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Via Defence Web
Suspected Boko Haram rebels from Nigeria have attacked a Chinese work site in northern Cameroon, killing at least one Cameroonian soldier while 10 Chinese workers were missing and believed to have been abducted, officials and state media said.
The Chinese embassy in Yaounde confirmed the attack on Friday at a site near the town on Waza, 20 km (12 miles) from the Nigerian border close to the Sambisa forest, a Boko Haram stronghold.
Chinese Embassy political counsellor Lu Qingjiang said one Chinese worker was injured in the attack and 10 were missing, China’s Xinhua state news agency reported.
Ten vehicles belonging to China’s state-run construction company Sinohydro, which is repairing roads in Cameroon, were also taken in the attack, Xinhua said.
Lu called on the Cameroonian authorities to “not put the lives of Chinese nationals missing in danger in case actions of liberation be launched”, Xinhua said.
The Islamist group kidnapped more than 200 girls from a school on the Nigerian side of the border last month and Nigerian troops backed by foreign units are searching the area around the forest for them.
Friday’s incident began when power was cut in the evening. A five-hour gunfight followed, a guard at the Waza National Park told Reuters.
“Some of us decided to hide in the forest with the animals,” the guard said, requesting anonymity.
The governor of Cameroon’s Far North Region, Augustine Fonka Awa, said earlier he believed Boko Haram had carried out the attack. Authorities were investigating reports that at least one Cameroon soldier was killed and 10 people were abducted, he said.