Image copyright AFP Image caption Cameroonian security forces have joined a regional battle against Boko Haram militants 
 
 About 80 children rescued from a Boko Haram camp in Cameroon cannot remember their own names or origins, according to an aid official who visited them. 
 
 The children - aged between 5 and 18 - did not speak English, French or any local languages, says Christopher Fomunyoh, a director for the US-based National Democratic Institute (NDI). 
 
 The children were found at a camp in northern Cameroon in November. 
 
 Nigeria-based Boko Haram militants have extended their campaign into Cameroon. 
 
 The militants are fighting to establish an Islamic caliphate in north-eastern Nigeria. 
 
 They control several towns and villages in the region and recently pledged allegiance to Islamic State (IS) militants, who have seized large areas of Syria and Iraq. 
 
 'Lost touch' 
 
 The children were rescued in Cameroon after security forces - acting on a tip-off - raided what was thought to have been a Koranic school. 
 
 Mr Fomunyoh told the BBC's Randy Joe Sa'ah in Yaounde that he had visited an orphanage that was helping rehabilitate the children. 
 
 He said the children had spent so long with their captors, being indoctrinated in jihadist ideology, that they had lost track of who they were. 
 
 "They've lost touch with their parents," he said. "They've lost touch with people in their villages, they're not able to articulate, to help trace their relationships, they can't even tell you what their names are." 
 
 Meanwhile, a suspected Boko Haram attack on Tuesday killed at least six people at a marketplace in the northern Nigerian town of Maiduguri. 
 
 The suicide bombing was reportedly carried out by a middle-aged woman. 
 
 Boko Haram at a glance 
 
 Founded in 2002, initially focused on opposing Western-style education - Boko Haram means "Western education is forbidden" in the Hausa language 
 
 Launched military operations in 2009 to create Islamic state 
 
 Thousands killed, mostly in north-eastern Nigeria - has also attacked police and UN headquarters in capital, Abuja 
 
 Abducted hundreds, including at least 200 schoolgirls 
 
 Controls several north-eastern towns 
 
 Launched attacks on neighbouring states 
 
 Boko Haram pledge to IS raises stakes 
 
 Why is Boko Haram so strong? 
 
 Can regional force beat Islamists? 
 
 IS shaping Boko Haram media ||||| YAOUNDE, Cameroon - More than 10,000 panic-stricken Cameroonians are fleeing border regions with Nigeria's Borno state for safer locations following attacks by Nigeria's Islamic militant group Boko Haram, government officials said Tuesday. 
 
 Boko Haram has, in the past month, raided at least two dozen villages and towns in northern Cameroon. The group also kidnapped dozens of people during an attack on Mabass village on Sunday. 
 
 The insurgents are looting food and livestock, and a humanitarian and food crisis looms, the minister of territorial administration and decentralization Rene Emmanuel Sadi said Tuesday. 
 
 Boko Haram hostages now free 
 
 Students and teachers are among those who have fled their homes. More than 10 schools were deserted after attacks Sunday, adding to the about 140 schools that have shut their doors because of the insurgency bleeding over into Cameroon, said Cameroon's minister of education Monouna Fotso. The government is trying to accommodate the affected students, Fotso said. 
 
 There is a moral obligation for safer schools to admit the children despite limited resources and space, said Bernadette Appi, a teacher at a primary school in Maroua, where some children have been moved. 
 
 The attacks in Cameroon highlight the growing regional threat posed by Boko Haram. The militant group seeks to impose Islamic Shariah law in Nigeria, Africa's most populous nation with 170 million people. The group has seized villages in an area stretching about 250 kilometers (155.35 miles) along the border between Cameroon and Nigeria. 
 
 Boko Haram militants using child bombers in Nigeria attacks 
 
 Boko Haram attacked Mabass village, in the Far North region of Cameroon, early Sunday and staged its largest kidnapping yet in Cameroon, according to the government. The military said up to 60 people were kidnapped, though about 30 eventually escaped. 
 
 Chadian troops began arriving in Cameroon on Sunday to support Cameroon's army in the fight against the militants. 
 
 Neighboring countries increasingly are being drawn into Nigeria's five-year Islamic uprising, which has killed thousands and driven 1.6 million people from their homes, including across borders into Cameroon, Niger and Chad. 
 
 Boko Haram has been recruiting fighters in all three countries, officials said.
– It was decidedly good news when a group of about 80 children was rescued from a Boko Haram camp in northern Cameroon in November—but the repercussions of their abduction remain painfully evident. An aid official who recently visited an orphanage that's helping the kids get reacclimated to a semblance of normal life tells the BBC that they don't speak "English, French, or any local languages" and that they can't even remember their own names. The militant group, which just this week officially pledged its allegiance to ISIS, has moved its campaign to set up an Islamic caliphate beyond Nigeria and started attacking border towns in neighboring Cameroon in recent months, CBS News notes. The children extricated from Boko Haram's grasp late last year are between the ages of 5 and 18, Christopher Fomunyoh, a director for the National Democratic Institute, tells the BBC—and they've sadly succumbed to Boko Haram's brainwashing for all things ideologically extremist, he adds. "They've lost touch with their parents, they've lost touch with people in their villages," he says. "They're not able to articulate, to help trace their relationships. They can't even tell you what their names are." (Recent suicide attacks in Nigeria appear to be Boko Haram assaults.)