article_snippet.sent: Boko Haram militants this week attacked civilians inside Cameroon for the first time in a month, killing at least 16 villagers, a military spokesman told CNN Saturday.
article_snippet.sent: Nlate Eballe, an operations officer with a special military unit set up to fight Boko Haram.
article_snippet.sent: Dia is a village that borders Lake Chad and has been identified as a recruiting ground for Boko Haram.
article_snippet.sent: Regional Gov. Mijiyawa Bakary said the insurgents have been attacking border villages in Cameroon in search of supplies.
article_snippet.sent: Cameroonian troops retook cattle that was stolen by the attackers in Dia, Eballe said.
article_snippet.sent: The last attack in Cameroon by the Nigeria-based militants was March 10, when the assailants struck the locality of Kerawa-Mafa in a failed attempt to overrun a military base.
article_snippet.sent: Boko Haram, whose name translates as "Western education is sin," has been waging a years-long campaign of terror aimed at instituting its extreme version of Sharia law in Nigeria.
article_snippet.sent: Boko Haram tactics have intensified in recent years, from battling Nigerian government soldiers to acts disproportionately affecting civilians -- such as raids on villages, mass kidnappings, assassinations, market bombings and attacks on churches and unaffiliated mosques.
article_snippet.sent: Much of this violence has taken place in Nigeria, but neighboring countries -- Cameroon included -- have also been hit increasingly hard.
article_snippet.sent: Journalist Ngala Killian Chimtom in Yaounde, Cameroon, contributed to this report.
highlights_snippet.sent: Boko Haram is based in Nigeria but has attacked across the border of several neighbors .