At least 11 people have been killed and eight more kidnapped by suspected Boko Haram terrorists in an overnight attack on a village in northern Cameroon near the Nigerian border.

The assailants burned down more than 30 houses in Gakara village, just outside the town of Kolofata, which has been a frequent target of self-detonated bombings by the Nigeria-based terrorist group.

"The attack happened around midnight. The Boko Haram assailants arrived. They set 32 houses on fire... killed, pillaged, and traumatized the population," said a district official on Friday as quoted in a Reuters report, adding that he wished to remain anonymous since he was not authorized to speak.

He added that many people in the targeted village had fled the area for a camp near Kolofata, which houses thousands of people displaced by the Boko Haram campaign.

An army colonel put the death toll at 11, but the district official said 15 people had been killed, according to the report, which further cited the mayor of Kolofata as confirming the attack but noting that he had no knowledge about the casualty figure.

A child bomber recently killed four members of a local self-defense group in the border village of Amchide in northern Cameroon, an area often targeted by Boko Haram.

The United Nations children’s fund (UNICEF) released a statement on August 22, expressing “extreme” concern about the “appalling” rise in the use of children as “human bombs” by the notorious terror group.

According to the statement, 83 children, “most often under 15 years old,” have been “used as human bombs” in northern Nigeria since January 2017.

SS