(Photo: Aid to the Church in Need)

The burnt out Church of Saint Peter in Douroum, which was torched during a January 2020 attack

A terrorist group with a history of targeting Christians in Nigeria is causing terror among inhabitants in Cameroon, a local bishop reports.

Bishop Bruno Ateba of Maroua-Mokolo, northern Cameroon, told Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) that there had been a spike in attacks by Boko Haram in the country since the start of 2020. 

In the last few weeks, he reports that there have been 13 attacks attributed to the terrorist group that has killed thousands of people, many of them Christians, in Nigeria. 

Bishop Ateba said: "Not a day passes without attacks on the villages on Cameroon's frontier with Nigeria."

Describing the terrorist group in stark terms, he said: "Boko Haram is like the beast of the Apocalypse, or a many-headed Hydra – whenever you cut off one of its heads, it seems simply to grow another.

"Just at the moment when people thought that the beast of Boko Haram had been completely decapitated, the horror has resurfaced in northern Cameroon.

"Within my own diocese there have been 13 attacks in the last weeks."

Islamist militants are also suspected to be behind an arson attack on a church in Cameroon on the feast of the Epiphany. 

Bishop Barthélemy Yaouda Hourgo of Yaouga, Cameroon, told the charity, which supports persecuted Christians, that the place of his birth has been devastated by militants, with the inhabitants forced to flee. 

He said: "My birthplace, the village of Blablim, no longer exists.

"The terrorists have murdered a young man of my family and totally devastated the entire village, including the house I was born in.

"Everybody, with the exception of the sick and elderly, was forced to flee to Mora, 10 miles away.

"It will be impossible now to gather in the cotton harvest. Right now the weather is very cold in this area.

"Please pray for all those who are having to sleep outside in the inclement weather at this time the year."