At least nine villagers were killed on Tuesday November 21 in a new attack in western Cameroon attributed by the authorities to English-speaking separatist rebels, who have been battling the army for seven years in a conflict that has taken a heavy toll on civilians.
At dawn, the attackers stormed the market in the village of Bamenyam, in the Bamboutos department. “David Dibango, Prefect of Bamboutos, told state radio CRTV: “There are nine dead. “I counted nine dead”, confirmed a gendarmerie officer, requesting anonymity and attributing the massacre to “secessionists’.
This village in the West region borders the North-West region, populated by the English-speaking minority of Cameroon, a vast, predominantly French-speaking country in Central Africa.
Since late 2016, a deadly conflict in the North-West and South-West regions has pitted pro-independence armed groups against security forces, with each side regularly accused of crimes against civilians by international NGOs and the UN. These attacks are relatively frequent in the two regions or on their edges, with the rebels accusing some villagers of collaborating with the State.
On November 6, 25 civilians, including women and a child, were killed in Egbekaw, in the North-West, in an assault attributed by Yaoundé to the separatists, who executed some victims and burned others. According to CRTV, a woman was among those killed in Bamenyam on Tuesday November 21. Two members of the security forces who were returning fire were wounded, according to the official media, and a number of stores were set on fire.