Suicide Bomber Kills Four in Attack Near North Cameroon Market

(Bloomberg) -- Four people were killed and two seriously injured in northern Cameroon after a suspected Boko Haram militant detonated explosives outside the main market in the town of Mora.

All the dead, including the suicide bomber, were travelling in a motorbike taxi that was headed to the market, said Communication Minister Issa Tchiroma Bakary.

“We are lucky that the bomb did not go off inside the market, the death toll would have been far higher,” Bakary said, citing local security forces.

Sunday’s attack follows the abduction by Boko Haram operatives of three men at Doumpla, about 2 kilometers from the border with Chad. Heavily-armed kidnappers took the chief of a local zoo and two of his neighbors, said Major Godfroy Yende Sake, commander of an infantry battalion stationed at the town of Touboro.

U.S. citizens have been advised by the Department of State to desist from journeying to Cameroon’s far north, north and parts of the Adamawa and east regions. Thirty-seven foreigners have been kidnapped in northern Cameroon since 2013, according to a release on the website of the U.S. Embassy in Yaounde.

To contact the reporter on this story: Divine Ntaryike Jr. in Johannesburg at dramzi@bloomberg.net. To contact the editors responsible for this story: Matthew Boyle at mboyle20@bloomberg.net, Paul Jarvis, Steve Geimann