Boko Haram kidnap Cameroon vice-PM’s wife

Yaounde: Boko Haram militants have abducted the wife of Cameroon’s Vice-Prime Minister Amadou Ali in an attack on Sunday, an official said.

The Islamist group attacked the vice-prime minister’s home and kidnapped his wife in the northern town of Kolofata, lying along the Nigerian border, Xinhua reported citing Issa Tchiroma Bakary, Cameroon’s minister of information, as saying.

The attack claimed the lives of 10 people, military sources said.

In another incident, Seini Boukar, a religious leader locally known as ‘Lamido’, was kidnapped by the militants, the minister said.

Nigeria, Cameroon’s neighbouring country in western Africa, has been facing severe terrorist attacks from the Islamist fundamentalist group Boko Haram with the mid-April abduction of 200 schoolgirls in Chibok, northern Nigeria, and a late June bomb blast in Abuja which killed 21 people.

Boko Haram is based in northeast Nigeria, north Cameroon and Niger. It seeks to establish an Islamic state ruled by sharia. The group has been declared a terrorist organisation by the US and sanctioned by the UN Security Council.