Four young people were killed when Cameroon government army soldiers opened fire at Meta Quarters, a key site in Bamenda, witnesses said, as the Biya Francophone government sought to end the crisis in Southern Cameroons.

Several witnesses, gathered along the main road in the neighborhood, said that pickup trucks arrived shortly after 2:00 pm on Saturday, January 23, 2021 and soldiers began to fire tear gas and then bullets. It wasn’t immediately clear how many people had been killed, but each of the witnesses said they saw four bodies on the road.

Cameroon Intelligence Report gathered that three of the four victims, Ngalim Alucious, Ntakah Nelly Mbah, and Sale Sadam reportedly came from Old Town to visit family relations while the fourth, Brian, was a Meta Quarters resident.

We understand the army revealed in a statement that soldiers found the teenagers smoking weed in an uncompleted building.

“The government in Yaoundé has sent the army to come and kill us and our children and grand children,” said an 86-year-old woman.

The North West governor’s office referred questions about the killings to the police commissioner in Bamenda, who couldn’t be immediately reached for comment.

The constant killing of civilians in Southern Cameroons and the decision to use military force to quell the Ambazonia uprising has moved politics in the two Cameroons into an uncertain phase.

On Thursday, May 28, 2020, the Cameroon government military conducted an offensive raid around the neighborhood of Upper Bunduma, Buea, which led to the killing of four unarmed young men, according to the Centre for Human Rights and Democracy in Africa, CHRDA.

The people of Bakweri Town, Sandpit area in Buea, on Monday, July 30, 2018, experienced one of their greatest horrors when masked elements of the Rapid Intervention Battalion (BIR) moved into Bakweri Town and massacred youths, took some away several teenagers and executed them in neighboring Muea.

On September 27, 2018, Cameroon government soldiers arrested six young men around Babouti quarters in Buea Town in the early hours of the morning before shooting them dead. A stray bullet caught a seventh person, an elderly man who gave up the ghost.

By Fon Lawrence with files

In the early hours of Friday 22nd and Saturday 23rd January, about 21 gunmen from the Atanga Nji Militia stormed PSS Mankon boarding school. The attackers attempted to lock the dormitories and later on set it on fire.

Yaoundé has already blamed the incident on Southern Cameroons Self Defense Forces but people in the know in Bamenda are saying the attacks were carried out in an area protected by government troops.

Some 60 girls and 73 boys were rushed out of the dormitories. Our correspondent in Bamenda revealed at the time of filing this report that three female students sustained life threatening injuries.

A source at the North West governor’s office that spoke to Cameroon Concord News but sued for anonymity said elements of the Cameroon government Army Rescue were in PSS Mankon on Saturday night at the time of the action and came under attack from Ambazonia Restoration Forces.

There are conflicting reports as to which side should be held responsible for Saturday’s attacks with the pro Biya Moderator of the Presbyterian Church in Cameroon, Rt. Rev. Fonki Samuel Forba saying “the source of the fire is yet to be ascertained”.

The office of the Southern Cameroons Vice President is maintaining a kind of deliberate silence on the matter and no Ambazonia group has claimed responsibility.

In a statement the Moderator noted that “Two separate fire incidences at the campus of PSS Mankon on Friday, 22nd and Saturday 23rd January 2021 affected three dormitories and the property of some students.  The students in the affected dormitories have been relocated and the Proprietor, in collaboration with the Education Secretary and the administration of the school, is doing everything possible to ensure that affected students are well catered for.”

A beaming Senior Divisional Officer for Mezam, Simon Emile Mooh has ordered the Mayor of Bamenda II to begin reconstruction of the boys ‘dormitory while the Mayor of Bafut is to focus on the girls’.

By Fon Lawrence in Bamenda

A 25-year-old man from Cameroon who is serving a prison sentence in Malta has been re-arrested on the strength of a European arrest warrant issued by Germany.

The man is wanted in Germany for armed robbery and organised crime.

He is currently serving a prison sentence at the Corradino Correctional Facility after the court found him guilty of crimes relating to counterfeit passports, last September.

The man was taken to court earlier and accepted to be extradited back to Germany.

He remains in custody at the Corradino Correctional Facility.

The prosecution was led by Inspector Mark Galea from the Department of International Relations.

Source: Maltatoday

The family of the former general manager of the Cameroon Radio and Television, Gervais Mendo Ze has declined to say what his ailment is as the one time cabinet minister was again taken to a Yaoundé hospital late Tuesday.

A family source recently revealed that the severity of Mendo Ze’s illness had been shrouded in secrecy by the Biya Beti Ewondo regime.

The former chartered member of the ruling CPDM crime syndicate had always suffered some kind of sickness ever since he was arrested and detained at the Kondengui High Security Prison on allegations of embezzlement and fraud.

Cameroon Intelligence Report gathered that Mendo Ze had kidney problems and the latest bout of his illness is related to a heart condition.

There has been so many local media reports that Gervais Mendo Ze was on the mend but we will never really know the true extent of the illness troubling the man who now weighs barely 45 kilograms.

The French Cameroun political elite can no longer stand up, sit down on his own or lift his elbow to take a sip of water. He spends his days lying down, with a barely audible voice.

Some concerned barons of the so-called essingan clan have written to his blood relation-President Paul Biya and one of those letters carried the title “Mr. President of the Republic, remember Professor Gervais Mendo Ze”.

By Rita Akana in Yaounde

Hundreds of Southern Cameroonians are feared missing after elements of the Rapid Intervention Battalion raided Tiko, Mutengene and Limbe late on Thursday in a move to protect visiting football teams participating in the African Nations Championship.

The BIR soldiers arrived Fako County on military trucks and started shooting into the air, causing people to flee and arresting dozens, witnesses said.

The Francophone dominated army targeted popular neighborhoods including residential areas in Tiko, Likomba, Mutengene and Limbe and in the outskirts of Buea – where more than a thousand Buea University students are said to reside.

Territorial Administration minister, Paul Atanga Nji said on Tuesday that the Biya Francophone government will take tough measures against Southern Cameroons Self Defense Forces who killed security forces.

The Minister of Defense Joseph Beti Assomo also said there was credible intelligence that Ambazonia Restoration Forces were planning to sabotage critical telecoms infrastructure to sabotage and disrupt the Total African Nations Championship (CHAN) 2020 football tournament in Limbe.

Meanwhile, the Vice President of the exiled Southern Cameroons Interim Government, Dabney Yerima condemned the so-called French Cameroun “callez callez” and has reportedly ordered the Ambazonia Intelligence Service to carry out a full audit of the Biya regime recent action in the Fako County.

Residents living in the Likomba area told Cameroon Concord News that they heard gunfire late on Thursday, and that the Cameroon government military operation lasted for more than five hours.

By Rita Akana in Buea

Cameroonian authorities say they are on high alert following threats by separatists to sabotage telecommunications infrastructure and disrupt the Total African Nations Championship (CHAN) 2020 football tournament in Limbe in the restive English-speaking part of the country, ITWeb reported, citing a memo sent to military chiefs in the region.

Minister of Defence Joseph Beti Assomo said there was credible intelligence that “separatist terrorists” were planning to sabotage critical telecoms infrastructure.

Source: Telecompaper

Cameroon’s Minister of Territorial Administration, Paul Atanga Nji said on Tuesday the government will take tough measures against separatist rebels who killed security forces in the country’s volatile English-speaking region of Northwest.

“These people who killed security forces and innocent civilians will be tracked down in their latest hideouts. In their own interest, they should surrender to the police and gendarmerie before we come for them. There will be no escape,” Nji told reporters while visiting a military checkpoint in Matazem that was attacked by armed separatists.

At least, 12 members of Cameroonian security guards have died in attacks by separatists since the start of January, according to security reports. The number of civilian casualties is not known.

“The good news is that some of the assailants and accomplices of the attacks have been arrested. What is going on now is the last of the resistance because the terrorists have lost strength and speed,” Nji added who regularly refers to separatists as “terrorists.”

Armed separatists have freshly intensified attacks in the region that was relatively calm in December, according to security sources.

Armed separatists and government forces have been embroiled in an over three-year-old bloody conflict in Cameroon’s two English-speaking regions of Northwest and Southwest where separatists want to establish an independent nation they call “Ambazonia.”

Source: Xinhuanet

The United Nations recently called for an investigation after Reuters reported that Cameroonian soldiers opened fire on fleeing civilians during a weekend raid, killing up to nine people.

Three witnesses told Reuters that soldiers entered the village of Mautu in the South West region – at the heart of a separatist insurgency – raided homes and shot civilians as they ran for cover under nearby cocoa bushes.

The Cameroonian military denies wrongdoing. It said it was conducting a raid on separatist positions when it came under fire and had killed what it labelled “terrorists”.

“Deeply concerned & saddened by the attack on Mautu … that claimed the lives of many civilians. I call for an investigation into this attack,” said the head of the U.N.’s Central Africa office, François Louncény Fall, on Twitter.

Britain also expressed concern.

“There must be an urgent and impartial investigation, and the perpetrators must be brought to justice,” the British High Commission in Yaounde said on Twitter.

For four years the army has clashed with Anglophone separatist fighters among the forests and cocoa farms of western Cameroon. Over 3,000 people have died in the violence, which has intensified since the start of this year.

The witnesses said they saw nine dead people, including a child and an old woman. None of the dead was a separatist fighter, they said.

Medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) said it was treating four people from the village, all with gunshot wounds: a young child, two elderly patients and a young woman.

International players have long called for peace. Abuses on both sides have made talks difficult.

Sunday’s attack comes as three soldiers face trial for their alleged involvement in the killing of 21 civilians last year in a village in the North West region.

Source: Reuters

The Vice President of the Southern Cameroons Interim Government, Dabney Yerima has underlined the urgent need to implement OPERATION CAPHOT aka THE BIG RUBBER GUN plan.

Yerima revealed that the plan is simply an operation that specifically provides equipment and prepares Ambazonia Restoration Forces for the next and decisive phase of the revolution.

The Southern Cameroons Vice President noted that the plan will end the presence of foreign forces from La Republique du Cameroun in Ambazonia and he reiterated again that all French Cameroun army soldiers must leave the Federal Republic of Ambazonia.

Speaking exclusively to Cameroon Concord News, Yerima observed that “For four years now Southern Cameroonians have proved that their country will not be submissive to anyone. We want relations with everyone including La Republique du Cameroun but ties must be anchored in dignity, respect for sovereignty and mutual interests.”

By Chi Prudence Asong

The Honorary Consulate of Belarus has opened in Cameroon. BelTA learned from the Belarusian Embassy in Nigeria.

“The official inauguration ceremony and the opening of the office of the Honorary Consul of the Republic of Belarus in the Republic of Cameroon Igor Kolesnikov took place in the city of Douala. During the ceremony Governor of Cameroon’s Littoral Region Samuel Ivaha Diboua handed over the exequatur to the Belarusian honorary consul,” the embassy informed.

The event was also attended by representatives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Cameroon, the Belarusian Embassy in Nigeria, executive and judicial authorities, the business community and the media.

In addition to that, the honorary consul and the representative of the Belarusian Embassy in Nigeria met with the governor of Cameroon’s Littoral Region to discuss promising areas of cooperation between Belarus and Cameroon. The governor expressed interest in visiting Belarus to learn more about its economic potential.

Igor Kolesnikov is a citizen of the Republic of Belarus, a doctor by education. He has been living in Cameroon since 1995. He is executive director of GROUP FORM S.A.R.L, a Cameroonian company that sells and services medical equipment in Cameroon. Igor Kolesnikov also runs a private practice in Douala. He is widely known in business circles in Cameroon.

Source: Eng.Belta