Communications minister Issa Tchiroma Bakary said in a statement that in the early hours on Monday, several hundred Boko Haram fighters used the cover of thick fog to enter Kolofata, a town and commune in Cameroon, from Nigeria to storm the town's military base, reports ABC News Online.

An elite army unit stationed at the military base fought back. The intense battle lasted more than five hours before the Islamic attackers fled for the border, the spokesman said. The army was able to seize an arsenal of heavy weaponry from the militants.

A local source told the press that residents fled "as soon as people heard the first gunfire."

Boko Haram's leader Abubakar Shekau warned last week the group would retaliate in response to a December airstrike against its fighters after they took control of a military camp.

Monday's attack on Kolofata was the first by Boko Haram since the army's elite Rapid Intervention Battalion arrived to defend the area following deadly strikes in 2014.

In July, 27 people, including the wife of a deputy prime minister, were held hostage for many weeks by the militants.

The militant group has seized dozens of northeast Nigeria towns in the last six months and controls parts of Borno state, which borders Niger, Chad and Cameroon.

TIME reports the Cameroon government issued a statement Tuesday that its military killed 143 Boko Haram extremists following a five-hour fight that resulted in one corporal dead and four soldiers wounded.

Last week, the Islamic raids killed hundreds of people in the town of Baga in Nigeria.

Boko Haram is fighting to establish an Islamic state in north-eastern Nigeria. The insurgency has killed at least 13,000 and left 1.5 million people displaced since 2009, according to TIME. The Islamic extremist group has increased attacks leading up to the country's presidential election next month.

Nigeria's president Goodluck Jonathan has condemned the Charlie Hebdo terrorist attack in Paris but has ignored attacks in his own country.

Jonathan, who is running for re-election, also remained silent about Islamist militant attacks in the north of Africa. When militants kidnapped over 200 Chibok schoolgirls, he made no public statement about it for nearly three weeks.