(File photo) Emergency workers taking away the remains of a victim of suicide bomber in Nigeria

Officials say a double suicide bombing killed nine  people and wounded 30 on Friday near a camp in northern Cameroon housing civilians displaced by Nigeria’s Boko Haram militants.

The bombers , both men, entered the town of Kolofata, around 10 km from the border with Nigeria, before dawn on Friday, posing as refugees looking for food before the start of the daytime fast for Ramadan.

“Once among the population, they detonated their explosives, one after the other. The official death toll is 1l, including the two suicide bombers, and 30 wounded,” Mindjiyawa Bakary, governor of Cameroon’s Far North region, told Reuters.

A local government official put the death toll at six and said more than 30 people were wounded, 10 seriously, in the twin blasts that tore through the camp in the town of Kolofata at about 6 a.m. local time (1 a.m. ET).

A police officer said four people were confirmed dead. Both bombers also died.

Northern Cameroon has in recent years suffered from the overflow of violence linked to Nigeria’s Boko Haram Islamist insurgents.

Nigerian refugees have flooded across the border and local residents have been forced to flee their homes.

Boko Haram launches frequent cross-border raids in a bid to carve out an Islamic caliphate.

Its eight-year insurgency has killed more than 15,000 and displaced two million people in the Lake Chad region.

Villages and towns in the area have regularly been targeted by suicide bombers.

A similar attack in Kolofata killed nine people in September 2015.

Thousands of troops have been deployed to the area in a bid to stem the violence. (Reuters/NAN)