Cameroon military plane crash kills general

A senior Cameroonian general in charge of the battle against Boko Haram Islamist militants was killed in a helicopter crash while on patrol, the government said on January 23.

The accident occurred on the evening of January 22 in the Bogo district in the far north, where the Cameroonian army and regional special forces have been battling Islamist militants for the past two years.

A Cameroonian general has died in a helicopter crash. Photo: CNA

General Jacob Kodji was commander of the 4th Military Region and head of the 4th Emergency Operations Unit, which fights the Boko Haram insurgent group. Three other officers were also killed in the crash, the cause of which has not yet been determined, the government said.

Boko Haram is based in northern Nigeria and regularly launches cross-border attacks in an attempt to create an Islamic state. The militant group has been waging an insurgency for the past eight years, killing more than 15,000 people and displacing two million in the Lake Chad region.

According to PLO