Boko Harem 5,000 freed 60 Militants captured

Cameroonian soldiers from the Rapid Intervention Brigade stand guard amidst dust kicked up by a helicopter in Kolofata, Cameroon​

Issa Tchiroma said at least 5,000 people were freed, including the elderly. They were transported to a camp for displaced people in the Nigerian town of Banki and are receiving treatment from both Cameroon and Nigerian military health workers, he said. No soldiers were killed in the offensive, Issa Tchiroma said. In December last year, Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari announced troops had chased Boko Haram militants out of their key remaining base in the Sambisa forest, another former stronghold that straddles Cameroon’s border with Nigeria.

Cameroon and Nigeria that same month reopened the border between the two countries for the first time in three years. Cameroon has since called for vigilance and collaboration between its military and the population, stating that the insurgents had resorted to large-scale suicide bombings as their firepower had been greatly reduced. Boko Haram's six-year insurgency has killed more than 25,000 people and displaced nearly 2.3 million, according to rights groups and the United Nations.

Cameroon Claims to Have Freed 5,000 Boko Haram Captives

In December 2016 after two years as captive some of the girls taken captive by Boko Harem were reunited with their families.

It is the girls' first return home since they were kidnapped from their school in Chibok in April 2014. The young women were freed in October after Switzerland and the International Red Cross made a deal with Boko Haram. Since then, the 21 girls have been held in a secret location for debriefing by the Nigerian government. One of the girls, Asabe Goni, 22, told Reuters news agency it was a "miracle" that she was home again. Helping her mother prepare for Christmas, she said she was excited to go to church on Christmas Day. "I never knew that I would return (home)," she said simply. "I had given up hope of ever going home."

The 21 Chibok girls released by the militant group Boko Haram have returned home for Christmas​

Of the 276 students kidnapped, 197 are still reportedly missing, and negotiations for their release are under way. Many of the Chibok girls were Christian, but were encouraged to convert to Islam and to marry their kidnappers during their time in captivity. Ms Goni said some were whipped for refusing to marry, but otherwise they were well treated and fed, until food supplies recently ran short. After the deal in October, the girls' captors announced that any girl who wanted to be released should line up. Ms Goni was ill and too exhausted to move as the others scrambled into formation - but she soon learned she would be among the lucky few to leave.

Boko Haram 'ousted from forest bastion'

"I was surprised when they announced that my name was on the list," she said. Her joy was lessened, however, when she was forced to leave behind her cousin Margaret, with whom she had lived since childhood. The young woman was interviewed at her family's home in the northern city of Yola, surrounded by her father, stepmother, five siblings, and several neighbours. "Some of the other girls left behind started crying," Ms Goni said. "But the Boko Haram men consoled them, telling them that their turn to go home would come one day." Before the girls' release, there had only been one confirmed release of a student kidnapped from Chibok.

On 24 December, Nigeria's President Muhammadu Buhari said the army had driven Boko Haram's militants from the last camp in their Sambisa forest stronghold. "The terrorists are on the run and no longer have a place to hide," Mr Buhari said in a statement. The army has been engaged for the last few weeks in a major offensive in the forest, a huge former colonial game reserve in north-eastern Borno state. There has been speculation that some of the Chibok girls are being held in the forest, after it was named by a small number of those who escaped. Mr Buhari said that efforts to find the remaining girls were being intensified.

Freed Chibok girls reunited with their families for Christmas - BBC News

It has been a battle ground in 2015 109 Boko Harem terrorist were held.

Cameroonian investigative journalist, Bisong Etahoben, has stated that the country’s authorities have sentenced 109 supposed Boko Haram members to death.

Nigerians in their reactions praise the government of the neighbouring country for this decision.
Cameroon is among the five West African countries that have been badly affected by the attacks of the deadly Boko Haram sect.

Muhammadu Buhari during his inauguration on May 29, 2015, promised to wipe out the insurgents.

He gave his army chiefs a three-months deadline to end the insurgency in Nigeria.

Buhari in December last year announced that Nigerian army has ‘technically defeated’ the terrorists. However, it seems that the war is still far from the end.

Source: Boko Haram: Cameroon To Execute 109 Boko Haram Members Soon – LATEST NIGERIA NEWS
 
It is not an easy place to be:

 Shortages of food, medicine and clothing in refugee camps compounds the vulnerability of victims who include many unaccompanied girls and women orphaned and widowed by the 7-year uprising, the New York-based organization said. In July, it documented the rapes and sexual exploitation of 37 females, including four who said they were drugged and then abused. Some described having sex in exchange for food for their children, including a woman at a camp that had received no food for about seven weeks.

Camp guards demand sexual favors to allow women out of the gates to beg or buy food, even though U.N. guidelines say there should be freedom of movement in camps, the report said. It quoted some victims saying their abusers abandoned them when they became pregnant. "I just feel sorry for the baby because I have no food or love to give him," it quoted a raped 16-year-old as saying. "I think he might die."

The report quoted a health worker at a camp housing 10,000 as saying the number of people needing treatment for HIV and other sexually transmitted infections had risen from 200 cases in 2014 to more than 500 in July 2016. For months, aid workers have been reporting such abuse only to have the Emergency Management Agency, which manages the camps, deny it.

Human Rights Watch said it met Sept. 5 with the minister of women affairs, Sen. Aisha Jumai Alhassan, who promised to investigate and respond. She never did. But on Monday, President Muhammadu Buhari ordered Nigeria's police chief and governors of affected states to investigate immediately. A statement promised his government will "do its very best" to protect "these most vulnerable of Nigerian citizens."

HRW: Boko Haram refugees raped by officials, security force