"Seventeen soldiers and nine civilians" were killed in the attack early Monday on Darak, a Cameroonian island located near Lake Chad, the regional security official told AFP.

A preliminary count, given on Monday, had three Cameroonian soldiers killed along with an unspecified number of civilians in an attack on a military post in the area. L’oeil du Sahel cites sources as saying 37 persons died in the attack.

An official told AFP on Tuesday June 11, 2019 that the Boko Haram attack sparked fierce combat with Cameroonian troops. He said 40 of the jihadists were captured and seven soldiers remained missing.

Before being repelled, the jihadists managed to hoist their flag over Darak, several security sources said according to the AFP.

Boko Haram's decade-long uprising to establish a hardline Islamic state in Nigeria's northeast, which has killed more than 27,000 people and left 1.8 million homeless, has spilled into neighbouring Niger, Chad and Cameroon.

An anti-Boko Haram force combining soldiers from Chad, Cameroon, Niger, and Nigeria has been set up but has failed to rout the group from the restive Lake Chad region.

On Saturday, April 27, 2019, the same Jihadists from Nigeria's Boko Haram killed at least four people and badly wounded four others in an attack on Kofia, a Cameroonian island on Lake Chad, an official source had told AFP.

The attackers also destroyed part of a military post and vandalised shops in the attack late Saturday, the source said, adding three civilians and one soldier were killed.

Kofia Island is in the far north of Cameroon near the border with Chad.

"Cameroon and Chadian forces" were pursuing the assailants, the source said.

The jihadist group has stepped up attacks in Cameroon and neighbouring countries. Earlier in April, they were blamed for an attack that killed 11 civilians in the northern locality of Tcharkamari.

That attack was before now the deadliest one blamed on Boko Haram in recent months, which have seen a surge in violence after a period of calm last year.