Suspected Boko Haram fighters have abducted up to 80 people, many of them children, in a deadly assault on villages in northern Cameroon, officials say.

"According to our initial information, around 30 adults, most of them herders, and 50 young girls and boys aged between 10 and 15 years were abducted," a senior army officer deployed to northern Cameroon told news agency Reuters.

That would make it Boko Haram's largest abduction in Cameroon to date.

Government spokesman Issa Tchiroma Bakary confirmed that three people were killed in the attack on Sunday, which targeted the village of Mabass and several others along the Nigerian border.

He said soldiers had intervened and exchanged fire with the assailants for around two hours. He added that up to 80 houses were destroyed.

The assault comes just days after Amnesty International released satellite images of "catastrophic" Boko Haram attacks on two towns in Nigeria.

It believes hundreds of people were killed and that over 3,700 structures were either damaged or destroyed in the attacks in Baga and neighbouring Doron Baga earlier this month.

The campaign group said the pictures, taken on January 2nd and 7th, provided "indisputable and shocking evidence" of the scale of the assaults.

The Islamist organisation was also responsible for the kidnap of more than 200 teenage girls from a school in the northern Nigerian town of Chibok last April.

Boko Haram has been fighting a bloody six-year insurgency to create an Islamic state which has left thousands dead and forced hundreds of thousands to flee their homes.

Attacks are increasing in frequency as Boko Haram continues to seize territory in northern Nigeria, and expands its insurgency across the border.

Chadian troops began to arrive in Cameroon on Sunday in order to help repel the extremists' offensive.

Originally posted January 18th