Cameroon General Dies In Chopper Crash

Gen Kodji was leading an operation against Boko Haram. Cameroon govt

At least four Cameroonian soldiers, including a general who was coordinating the fight against Nigerian Boko Haram militant Islamists, were killed Sunday in a helicopter crash, reports say.

BBC Africa Live report continues:

"We lost four men, including the general", named as Jacob Kodji, as well as a colonel, a senior military official who is involved in the fight against Boko Haram told AFP news agency.

The men were killed when the Cameroonian military helicopter they were travelling in crashed in Bogo region in the far north, said the official, without giving details of the cause of the accident. 

"They were on a mission in Waza Park as part of an operation to battle Boko Haram," he said. 

Gen Kodji was the leader of Emergence 4, the name given to one of the operations launched by Cameroon against Boko Haram. 

He is the first Cameroonian general to die in the battle against Boko Haram, whose insurgency has spread across the border into Cameroon, Chad and Niger as the militants have been pushed out of their strongholds in northeastern Nigeria.

At least 20,000 people have been killed and some 2.6 million displaced in the violence.

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Commander In Cameroon's Fight With Boko Haram Dies In Helicopter Crash

Meanwhile Reuters reports a top general in charge of Cameroon's fight against Islamist militant group Boko Haram died in an accidental helicopter crash on a patrol mission, the government said on Monday.

The crash happened on Sunday evening in the Bogo district of the Far North region, where Cameroonian troops and a regional task force have been fighting the Islamist group for two years.

General Jacob Kodji was commander of the 4th joint military region and head of a counter-Boko Haram unit called Operation Emergence 4. Three other officers also died in the crash, the cause of which was unknown, the government said in a statement.

Boko Haram is based in northern Nigeria and launches frequent cross-border raids in a bid to carve out an Islamic caliphate. Its eight-year insurgency has killed more than 15,000 and displaced two million people in the Lake Chad region.