At least 42 people were killed after their houses were swept away Tuesday in a landslide caused by torrential rain in the western Cameroon city of Bafoussam, state media reported, showing images of rescuers desperately sifting through rubble for survivors.

“Searches are ongoing. We fear there are further deaths,” a senior local official told AFP on condition of anonymity as nightfall neared.

A total of 42 bodies were taken to the hospital in the city, according to an official statement read on Cameroon Radio Television (CRTV).

Media reports had earlier spoken of about 30 dead, with the radio reporting that four pregnant women were among the victims.

Pictures of the tragedy in Bafouassam posted on social media showed ramshackle houses having crumbled into the ochre-coloured terrain and men clad in hard hats digging away at piles of mud in the search for survivors.

“The houses that collapsed were built on the side of a hill in a risk zone,” said the local official in the West Region, of which Bafoussam is the capital, some 300 kilometres (185 miles) northwest of the capital Yaounde.

He said the landslide was caused by torrential rains that have fallen in the country over the past few days as well as the wider region, with neighbouring Central African Republic and Nigeria also seriously hit.

Cameroon President Paul Biya offered his condolences to families of the victims in a message broadcast on CRTV.

Landslides are quite exceptional in the area although further south they are less rare in the rainy season, notably in the English-speaking southwest.

It was in the southwestern coastal resort town of Limbe that five people died in a landslide following flooding in July last year.

Neighbouring Central African Republic, already mired in a brutal civil war, is reeling from 10 days of torrential rain which have plunged swathes of the country underwater, creating a new emergency in one of the world’s poorest nations.

Tens of thousands of people have been left homeless after the CAR’s largest river, the Oubangui, burst its banks at the height of the country’s worst floods in decades which have left parts of the capital Bangui submerged, prompting authorities to warn of the risk of cholera.

Several agrarian states in another Cameroon neighbour, Nigeria, have also been hit by flooding. A torrential downpour Monday allowed dozens of inmates to escape from prison in the central state of Kogi.

(AFP)

Cameroon on Monday deployed rescue workers and its military to search the wreckage of houses hit by a landslide that killed at least 34 people overnight in the western village of Bamoungoum, near the regional capital Bafoussam.

The landslide hit after torrential downpours flooded the area. Many houses have been destroyed, and the death toll has risen from 13 to at least 34 dead, said the governor of Cameroon’s west region, Awa Fonka Augustine.

“We also have at least a dozen people with severe wounds,” said Augustine. “The death toll may be higher because the incident occurred in the night and you know that there are many children in this neighborhood who were sleeping at the time.”

It is also feared that at least two pregnant women were killed. Pierre Kemvhe, 51, said his pregnant wife was still missing.

“My wife was expecting a baby and was very tired when she went to sleep while I was still in my shop last night,” he said. “I have not seen her.”

Cameroon minister of decentralization George Elanga Obam handed out money to survivors and encouraged the rescue workers.

“President Paul Biya asked me to give urgent financial assistance to those who have lost all of their belongings and are hungry without food and water. We shall examine their needs and see what to do as early as possible.”

It is estimated that at least 120 people live in the neighborhood that was swept by the floods and landslide.

Source: AP

Ambazonia Vice President Dabney Yerima has said that the continues detention of President Sisiku Ayuk Tabe and his top aides including more than one thousand Southern Cameroonians in French Cameroun jails is an act of incessant provocation that will not go unanswered.

Comrade Dabney Yerima who blatantly refused to comment on the recent happenings in Buea told Cameroon Concord News Group that Southern Cameroonians should concentrate on the struggle and observed that the campaign of arrests and killing of innocent Ambazonian citizens continues unabated and that no dramatic progress has been made in this regard despite efforts by the United States embassy in Yaoundé.

The exiled leader furthered that French Cameroun killing campaign in Southern Cameroons cannot be understood or accepted.  He also pointed out that Southern Cameroonians currently being held at prisons and detention centers in French Cameroun are exposed to various forms of torture and cruel methods of interrogation.

Dabney Yerima appealed to Southern Cameroonians in the diaspora to make great efforts, either through contacts with their host countries such as those residing in the European Union and the United States to secure the release of Ambazonia inmates languishing in French Cameroun detention centers.

The executive head of the political wing of the Southern Cameroons resistance stressed that the Interim Government was closely monitoring the cases of Southern Cameroons prisoners being held in French Cameroun.

By Chi Prudence Asong

Jailed Ambazonia leader President Sisiku Ayuk Tabe says he would like to see unity as Southern Cameroonians approach Buea. Sisiku Ayuk Tabe who spoke late on Monday with our Yaoundé city reporter stated that winning the Ambazonia war of liberation requires the consent and support of activists, donors and courageous men and women not politicians.

“I think that when we get to Buea, the politicians will then come in and make every Ambazonian feel that our nation is a warm place for them,” he said. The leader also referred to the October 1 celebrations throughout the Federal Republic of Ambazonia saying that the Southern Cameroons independence is a done-deal, but pointed out that greed and bad faith among some Ambazonian front line leaders has made the international community to see what has been achieved so far by the Ambazonia Restoration Forces as only step one of the divorce process.

Commenting on the wild celebrations that rocked Buea following the sudden death of the CPDM mayor, Patrick Ekema, the Ambazonia leader said “No man however great can win judgment against his people and even if you win, your people would say you betrayed them.”

Over the past month, French Cameroun political elites have floated a so-called Special Status for the people of Southern Cameroons which have been rejected by the Ambazonia Interim Government. Under the Special Status Deal, French Cameroun citizens would continue to marginalize Southern Cameroonians in every aspects of the life of the one and indivisible nation and Ambazonians will end up following French rules and Francophone directives.

President Sisiku Ayuk Tabe branded the French Cameroun government’s approach to Ambazonia’s quest for complete and total independence via its Major National Dialogue as despicable and a betrayal on the part of some Southern Cameroons CPDM elites who took part in the talks.

The Special Status deal reportedly opened a path for the Ambazonia Interim Government to launch the Amba Bonds Project to finance the resistance. But the Southern Cameroons diaspora has largely focused on the petty rivalry and divisions as some politicians and front line leaders play the blame game over the future of the Federal Republic of Ambazonia.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

The notorious Buea City Council Mayor, Patrick Ekena, has died in a La Republique hospital, a source in his native Buea has reported.

Reports of his death have triggered huge and wild celebrations in certain neighborhoods like Great Soppo and Molyko, neighborhoods inhabited by non-natives of the city.

The arrogant, uncouth and tactless mayor was noted for his clumsy ways of seeking the attention of the Yaounde political class.

Ekema, who had been found out as an academic crook, used the ruling CPDM to hide his crimes. He knew the ruling party was a crime syndicate and he made the most of it to feather his nest.

It was alleged that he had faked certificates from the University of Buea and those degrees actually helped him to rise to the prestigious position of Buea City Mayor.

Ekema has been a thorn in the side of Buea traders, given that they obeyed orders from separatists for the effective implementation of ghost town operations.

Ekema had been seeking higher political positions and he strongly held that the ideal way for him to achieve his goal was for him to frustrate the separatists whose ghost town operations had helped to cripple the city’s economy.

Confirming Ekema’s death from a native of the Southwest region, we were told that he had attended the funeral of a certain cleaner at the University of Buea and later went to BOVA, a town some five miles from Buea, for personal business.

The source added that it was being rumoured that he had been poisoned there. These are not tested allegations and without a conclusive autopsy, the rumor will continue to spread like wild fire.

However, it must be pointed out that his size was more than a lethal poison. His love of food and drinks had transformed him into “an elephant” and strokes, just like heart attacks, love those who pay little or no attention to their bulging waistlines.

Also, Ekema has been having numerous sleepless nights due to his desire to climb the political ladder at supersonic speed. His unwise involvement in the Southern Cameroons crisis was part of his strategy and this has surely cost him his life.

He saw the crisis as an opportunity for him to prove that loyalty to the ruling party pays off. From every indication, the stress of seeking social recognition and political appointment was, indeed, worse than the worst Russian biological weapon in existence.

Mayor Ekema bows out of the political scene young and bruised. He was embroiled in many scandals and these scandals went a long way in diminishing his reputation and chances at making giant strides in the political arena.

Buea has been offered another chance by nature. Ekema was an ill wind. He did not care about the city, but about his own political aggrandizement. The new city mayor will do himself a world of good by walking away from the path that Ekema had designed for the city. We hope he will find peace wherever he is today.

By Dr. Joachim Arrey