12 French Cameroun fishermen from Darak and Blangoua were killed by Boko Haram on Christmas Day in Lake Chad.

Darak and Blangoua, are two districts in the Far North region of French Cameroon, in the Logone-et-Chari Division. These two communes are situated on the Lake Chad basin.

Cameroon Concord News was reliably informed that Boko Haram militants arrived on motorbikes in Darak and started shooting in the air and burning houses. The jihadists reportedly caught seven men and slit their throats.

Local sources revealed that a small regiment of the French Cameroun army in the area arrived late. Correspondingly, the Boko Haram fighters had plenty of time to commit their crimes against innocent civilians.

“Dozens of people had just returned from their farms and some were resting, they were taken by surprise,” a local resident told state radio.

Five other lifeless bodies of members of the community were found by elements of the vigilance committee.

This attack on the villages of Darak and Blangoua comes after several assaults on numerous localities in the Far North.

In recent months, there has been an upsurge in violence and exactions by combatants of the Nigerian terrorist sect against the Cameroonian population.

The Biya regime has done all it can to reduce the international consequences of its failed militarization strategy against legitimate grievances in its Anglophone regions. Rather than seeking peace through political compromise and better governance, the regime confuses the international community by describing the crisis as a two-front war against “terrorists” and “criminals.”

After two years of painstaking research the international community is now aware that the Biya Francophone military operations against Anglophones in the Southwest and Northwest regions have noticeably weakened Cameroon’s efforts against Boko Haram and is now leading to broader regional insecurity.

Since 2019, Boko Haram has conducted larger-scale operations again, attacking Nigerian, Cameroonian, Nigerien and Chadian military targets and inflicting heavy casualties on soldiers and civilians alike. In late September, Nigeria’s Bornu state governor’s convoy was attacked twice in two days not far from the Cameroon border. But the Cameroonian regime is willing to ignore Islamist resurgence around Lake Chad because it perceives the Anglophone crisis as a bigger threat to its tight grip on power. And, unfortunately, it is confident the international community will again ride to the rescue if the situation appears out of control.

By Rita Akana with additional reporting from Foreign Policy