The Cameroonian military has claimed it has killed Abubakar Shekau, the leader of Nigerian Islamist group Boko Haram - the second time his death has been announced in a week.
Cameroonian army officers have claimed they killed the terrorist chief in a fierce battle that ended with them pursuing militants over the border into Nigeria.
They released a gruesome photo showing what appeared to be Shekau's dead body. But Nigerian officials dismissed the claim that the said Shekau was killed by Cameroonian soldiers inside Nigeria.
Security forces have claimed to have killed Shekau dozens of times since he rose to the top of Boko Haram in 2010.
Nigeria's armed forces had only last claimed to have killed him last Wednesday.
Shekau reportedly uses body doubles to confound his enemies and, although the man in the photo bears a strong resemblance to him, there has been no independent confirmation that Cameroon's forces have got the right person.
Boko Haram and its leader became infamous across the world after it abducted 200 young schoolgirls from their dormitory in north-east Nigera earlier this year.
Shekau appeared in a video with the girls, where he threatened to sell them off into slavery.
Cameroon has made no official announcement that its soldiers have killed the Boko Haram leader, but several army officers told local media by telephone they had made significant gains in fighting the group.
'Last night fighting was exceedingly violent. It even happened that our troops had to fight beyond our borders,' one anonymous senior officer told Agence Presse Africaine.
It seems the reported killing of Shekau came after a Cameroonian soldiers responded to a cross-border attack by Boko Haram militants in the remote north of Cameroon which began at the end of last week.
Boko Haram has made several incursions into the hilly jungle region of neighbouring Cameroon in recent months. Cameroon has deployed troops to the border in an attempt to repel them.
The militants launched their first assault in the early evening on Thursday in the village of Assighassia near the city of Mokolo.
Cameroon's army responded, and two of the militants were killed and a Cameroonian soldier injured, state-run Cameroon Radio Television reported late on Friday.
'Two hours later, the terrorist group again attacked the village of Ganse, also close to Mokolo, and killed four civilians,' the report said.
More than 40,000 people have fled to Cameroon to escape Boko Haram attacks in northern Nigeria, according to the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR, leaving behind few but the elderly and the disabled in their villages across the border.
But once over the border they are still not safe and UNHCR is seeking to transfer many of them to a refugee camp further from the frontier at Minawao.
Foncha Ngeh, a businessman based in Cameroon's northern hub of Maroua, said that hundreds of people were fleeing from isolated border villages in Cameroon to bigger towns and cities in search of safety.
Boko Haram have killed hundreds of people this year, mostly in northeastern Nigeria, although they have launched attacks across the country.
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