Late on Tuesday, at least six people were killed in twin suicide attacks in the small and once popular tourist town of Waza, said a security source who asked not to be identified.
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“The army is understood to have carried out the operation with backing from a regional anti-Boko Haram task force”.
There’s been no independent proof of the claim.
Cameroon troops managed to free “almost 900 hostages, seize a large arms and munitions cache and black-and-white flags”, the statement added, referring to the flag of the Daesh Takfiri terrorists.
Cameroon has been fighting Boko Haram since the Islamist militants began cross border strikes in 2013.
Boko Haram swore allegiance to IS in March 2015.
Other military sources in Cameroon confirmed that a military operation had taken place, although one expressed surprise at its scale.
Boko Haram, which operates mainly in northern Nigeria, has also been active in Chad, Niger and northern Cameroon.
The governor of Cameroon’s Far North province says that two teen female suicide bombers detonated explosives in a town in the area killing at least six people.
It was not clear if they included any of the schoolgirls abducted by Boko Haram from Chibok in April 2014 was among the hostages set free.
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More than 1,200 schools have been attacked in northeast Nigeria and hundreds of teachers and pupils have been killed by bomb blasts, raising fears among communities about the safety of resuming education, according to Unicef.
