A child bomber killed four members of a local self-defense group late Tuesday in northern Cameroon, an area often targeted by Boko Haram extremists in their long-running insurgency.

The attack in the village of Amchide, near the Nigerian border, was confirmed on Wednesday by a member of the self-defense force who requested anonymity, as well as by a security source in the capital, Yaounde.

"I was in my sector when I heard a large explosion in another part of the town," the self-defense source said.

"We saw that a boy had blown himself up in the middle of a group from the security committee," he said.

Two people were killed immediately, while two others died from their wounds later, he added.

Attacks attributed to Boko Haram terrorists have flared in northern Cameroon in recent weeks after months of relative calm, often targeting self-defense groups set up to respond to the extremist threat.

Boko Haram's bloody eight-year armed insurgency, initially focused on northeast Nigeria, has killed at least 20,000 people and displaced more than 2.6 million.

Since the beginning of the year, 83 children have been used to carry out bomb attacks in northeast Nigeria, UNICEF said, four times as many attacks as in all of 2016.

(Source: AFP)