One of the suicide bombers in Cameroon today

Latest report from Nguetchewe, northern Cameroon, where two Boko Haram female bombers exploded into a funeral wake-keeping early today put the death toll at 11, including the bombers.

About 20 people were injured, according to L’oeil du Sahel, a local newspaper that constantly keeps tab on the atrocities of Boko Haram in the area.

In the report by the newspaper, one of the female bombers did not fully explode as she was killed by the explosion from her colleague.

The two female bomber struck at 6:20 am, just when people who had spent the night there were preparing for a meal.

“The villagers were gathered for the wake when two suicide attackers joined them, pretending to be family members,” a witness told AFP.

Nguetchewe Cameroon.
Map credit: http://www.ladepeche.fr/

A police source in the region said several children, including a boy aged six and a 15-year-old, were among the victims. At least one member of a local vigilante committee set up in response to the upsurge in Boko Haram  attacks was also killed.

The most seriously injured were evacuated to a regional hospital in Maroua.

It is the fifth suicide attack in Cameroon’s far north region since the start of the year. On January 18 four people were killed in an attack at Nguetchewe’s mosque.

Nearly 1,200 people have been killed since Nigerian Islamists began staging attacks in neighbouring Cameroon in 2013, according to government figures.

Nguetchewe is a small village near the border with Nigeria where a French priest, Georges Vandenbeusch, was kidnapped in November 2013. He was held for 50 days before being released.

The kidnapping were blamed on Boko Haram, which has since sworn allegiance to the Islamic State group based in Syria and Iraq.