YAOUNDE, Cameroon (AP) — Boko Haram fighters have shot or burned to death about 90 civilians and wounded
500 in ongoing fighting in a Cameroonian border town near Nigeria, officials in Cameroon said Thursday.

Some 800 Islamic extremists attacking the town of Fotokol have "burned churches, mosques and
villages and slaughtered youth who resisted joining them to fight Cameroonian forces," Information
Minister Issa Tchiroma Bakari said.
The insurgents from Nigeria also looted livestock and food in the fighting that began Wednesday and was
continuing Thursday, Bakari told The Associated Press.
Boko Haram is using civilians as shields, making it difficult to confront them although reinforcements
have arrived in Fotokol, according to military spokesman Col. Didier Badjeck.
Schools also have been razed by the insurgents, whose nickname, Boko Haram, means "Western education
is forbidden" in the Hausa language.
Hundreds of insurgents were killed Wednesday compared to the loss of 13 Chadian and 6 Cameroonian troops,
Defense Minister Edgard Alain Mebe Ngo said. At least 91 civilians have been killed and most of more
than 500 wounded people cannot be immediately taken to the hospitals, he said. There was no way to
immediately confirm the account independently.
The fighters are believed to have crossed into Cameroon from nearby Gamboru, a Nigerian border town that
had been an extremist stronghold since November. Gamboru was retaken earlier this week and the fighters
driven out by Chadian and Nigerian air strikes supported by Chadian ground troops.
African Union officials on Thursday were finalizing plans for a multinational force to fight the
spreading Boko Haram uprising, although there are questions about funding. The AU last week authorized a
7,500-strong force from Nigeria and its four neighbors, Cameroon, Chad, Niger and Benin.
Senior officers from the U.N. peacekeeping department are attending the meeting in Yaounde, Cameroon’s
capital, said a U.N. official.
The Africans want U.N. Security Council approval and money to fund the mission, said the official who
spoke Wednesday at the United Nations and insisted on anonymity because he was not authorized to speak
to the press on the meeting.
France’s President Francois Hollande said Thursday his country is providing support with weapons,
logistics and operations for the multinational effort. At a news conference in Paris, he stopped short
of saying whether France is actually involved in military action itself. France has a big air base at
N’Djamena, the capital of Chad, which will lead the multinational force.
International concern has grown as Boko Haram has increased the tempo and ferocity of its attacks just as
Nigeria is preparing for presidential and legislative elections on Feb. 14.
Some 10,000 people were killed in Boko Haram violence last year compared to 2,000 in the first four years
of Nigeria’s Islamic uprising, according to the Council on Foreign Relations.
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Associated Press writers Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations and Jamey Keaten in Paris contributed to
this report.
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