Cameroon says it is increasing security along its borders with the Central African Republic and Nigeria after suspected rebel incursions and interceptions of vehicles transporting explosives.

Government officials and the military braved a heavy downpour in northern Cameroon Monday to visit the commercial town of Pakete on the border with Nigeria. Jean Abate Edi, governor of Cameroon’s North region where Pakete is located said his trip is to make sure that the border with Nigeria is immediately secured.

He said intelligence reports at his disposal indicate that security is threatened on Cameroon’s northern border with Nigeria. He said henceforth vehicles known locally as Starlettes are prohibited from transporting goods into Cameroon from Nigeria and that the military has been reinforced along the Nigerian border.

Edi did not say how many more troops have been deployed to the border zone.

Jude Mofor, coordinator of a government operation to secure the border zone, said he invited the governor and his top officials because of the increasing wave of insecurity along the border. He says last week the military intercepted two vehicles bringing into Cameroon explosives from Nigeria. He said Starlettes are increasingly being used in transporting illegal and prohibited goods.

“As our normal duty, we control everything that enters the country. This Starlette was coming and then we stopped it and it refused to stop. Our boys used a special technique that we have to stop vehicles. While controlling, the two occupants of the vehicle ran away. It is then we discovered this stock of explosives,” he said.

Mofor said they had opened investigations to determine the origin and destination of the explosives. He said they also seized and were keeping what he described as huge quantities of prohibited goods from Nigeria that may undermine the security of Cameroonians.

The governor said he suspected that the explosives were either destined to commit atrocities in Cameroon or were in transit to the troubled neighboring Central African Republic.

General Agha Robinson, commander of Cameroon troops fighting insecurity on Cameroon’s border with C.A.R. and Nigeria also visited the border zones. Robinson said the military also has noticed an increase in the number of people abducted for ransom along Cameroon’s border with C.A.R.

Robinson said he has increased troops on that border because Cameroon has within a week reported eight incursions from suspected C.A.R. rebels.

“We came to analyze the operations ongoing so that the success we are recording these days should continue. We came down also to talk to our soldiers to make them know that they have to carry out their mission with professional consciousness. We want to end by calling on the population to go towards those soldiers to denounce [suspects] and then they [the military] will be able to defend them [easily],” he said.

Robinson said in one of the incursions, the rebels left with an undisclosed number of cattle and money they seized from ranchers in the border town of Tignere.

Civilians said two other attacks on merchants were reported in the border town of Galim. They said the rebels also seized gasoline and fled on motorcycles.

Last Sunday a confrontation with Cameroon military killed three suspected rebels remaining in Tignere.

The Cameroon military said it seized war weapons from the rebels who had attacked to gain supplies but gave no further details.

Cameroon shares an 800-kilometer long boundary with the landlocked C.A.R. There are currently some 250,000 C.A.R. refugees in Cameroon.

For the past eight years, sectarian Christian and Muslim militias in C.A.R. have been waging war against each other with horrific violence.

Source: VOA

A pregnant woman living in Amtchali village at the outskirt of Mora town in French Cameroun was shot dead and the insurgents looted about 15 houses before leaving the village. The injured woman died while receiving treatment in a hospital in Mora.

Following the Armed forces’ continuous assault on the Islamist militants, the jihadists have stepped up raids on villages along the border, looting homes and abducting women.

On Thursday, August 28, the terrorists attacked an IDP camp in Kolofata at night making away with foodstuff and other valuables.

Two years ago President Biya said that Boko Haram had been defeated in the country. However, security is still a major issue in the two Cameroons with Southern Cameroons facing a bloody English-language separatist movement.

French Cameroun’s Far North Region for years has been the target of suicide bombings and other attacks by Boko Haram fighters who spilled over the border from Nigeria, where the extremist group is based. Nearly a quarter-million people in French Cameroun have been displaced.

Boko Haram fighters continue to attack French Cameroun military targets despite repeated Biya regime declarations that it has been crushed.

By Fon Lawrence

200 explosives have been seized in Garoua in northern French Cameroun by custom officers.  A security source hinted Cameroon Intelligence Report that this is the largest seizure of military hardware by the Customs Department.

This seizure comes at a time when several towns and cities including the nation’s capital Yaoundé have been rocked by a multiplication of explosions.   We understand the seizure took place on Saturday in Pakete, a village located in the Demsa district whose capital is Gashiga, Benue Division in bordering the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

A spokesperson for the French Cameroun Customs Department revealed that the improvised explosive devices were packed in a vehicle coming from Nigeria.

According to security experts in the CEMAC region, the highly porous, poorly secured and easy to cross border between Nigeria and French Cameroun is conducive for smuggling and illegal migration.

Elements of French Cameroun defence and security forces have tested and confirmed the dangerousness of the explosives.

It is vital to include in this report that in recent months several bombs have exploded in Yaoundé causing many injuries and significant material damage.

By Fon Lawrence

Unknown armed men burst on a beach in Cameroon’s border town of Ekok early Thursday and abducted 15 people, according to local authorities.

Witnesses said the victims, all beach workers, were working when heavily armed men held them at gunpoint and took them away to an unknown destination.

Authorities said preliminary results of an investigation indicated that some of the victims were Nigerians who regularly operate in the town that shares boundary with Nigeria.

No group has claimed responsibility for the abduction.

Ekok is located in Cameroon’s English-speaking region of Southwest that has been ravaged by a separatist conflict for four years.

Armed separatists are known to be operating in the town that also serves as their main route to Nigeria, according to security reports.

Source: Xinhuanet

A road accident in Cameroon’s Far North region killed five people and injured several others on Thursday, according to local police.

The accident occurred Thursday morning in the Bidzar locality along the National Road Number One, according to the police said.

Police are still investigating circumstances that led to the tragedy but witnesses said a truck collided head-on with an overloaded-bus, killing five people, including children, on the spot.

Survivors, some of them badly injured, have been sent to hospital, said the police.

Local authorities have ordered an immediate investigation into the accident.

Source: Xinhuanet

The Vice President of the Southern Cameroons Interim Government has said that the people of Ambazonia must hold firm to their country stating that French Cameroun’s “Gendarmerie and BIR model of governance has proven to be a complete and total failure where human values no longer exist.”

Dabney Yerima made the comments during a video-conference with leaders of a Southern Cameroons think tank in the United Kingdom on Wednesday in which the exiled leader appealed to Ambazonians in Great Britain and Northern Ireland to be a part of the International Conference on the armed conflict in the Southern Cameroons holding from October 30-November 1 in the United States of America.

Vice President Dabney Yerima observed that no right thinking Southern Cameroonian would love to continue living in a society where human values like “health, justice, and security are commodities reserved only for the ruling elites and members of their families.”

Yerima noted that the social gap in French Cameroun towns and cities is horrible and the number of the hungry and the homeless is steadily on the rise. “Our leader President Sisiku Ayuk Tabe made the right decision to get us out of this filth” he added

The Southern Cameroons Vice President also pointed out that in French Cameroun where some surrogates are claiming that there is peace and progress, four in five children suffer from hunger and additionally, insecurity and crime rate are very high with students and pupils murdering teachers inside school campuses with guns and knives.

Vice President Yerima censured Roman Catholics in his presentation when he said “the fact that French Cameroun is headed by a Roman Catholic Christian who is overseeing state sponsored killings of Bishops and priests is a source of humiliation and shame.”

The Ambazonia Vice President said that, apart from its numerous internal and managerial problems, French Cameroun and its leader Paul Biya also engaged in such common practices as murder, the staging of attacks in Southern Cameroons and the causing of insecurity in the entire Federal Republic of Ambazonia.

By Isong Asu in London

Cameroon has dispatched emergency aid for at least 5,000 people left homeless or displaced by the worst coastal flooding in decades.  Heavy rains this month swept floodwaters through Douala, Cameroon’s largest city and economic capital, leaving much of it underwater. 

 Fresh fish seller Marcelline Obono, 39, says she lost all of her fish in weekend floods in Cameroon’s economic capital Douala. She says she obtained a loan from a friend to buy fish and sell at the Nkoulouloun market, but that she is not certain of what may happen as more heavy rain threatening to fall.

 She says she is very very worried because her children who are back at home may not be safe if there is a heavy downpour. She says God saved her house from collapsing during last weekend’s heavy downpoor that flooded almost all of her neighborhood.

The government of Cameroon reports that more than 5,000 people are either homeless or have left their homes temporarily to seek refuge in safer areas of the town.

 Neighborhoods like Bepanda Safari, Akwa, New bell, Nkololoun, Bongo Cite Berge, Makepe Missoke, Carriere de tete, Mabanda Bonaberi, Bepanda Bongo, Bonamoussadi were the hardest hit. Many houses were completely covered by the floods.

 Six bridges including the one linking the city of Douala and the Douala International airport collapsed. Thousands of goats, sheep and fouls were dumped by the floods on the Atlantic ocean. No human deaths were reported.

Celestine Ketcha Courtes, Cameroon minister of housing and urban development, says failure by citizens to respect the city’s urbanization plan provoked the floods.

She says Cameroon president Paul Biya asked her to visit Douala and tell residents that he is unhappy with uncivil behaviors that expose civilians to floods. He says Biya is outraged at hapharzard dumping of used plastic papers and bottles that block streams and rivers. She says Biya has ordered a stop to the construction of houses on dry river beds and mountain slopes.

 Paul Atanga Nji, Cameroon territorial administration minister, says he was also dispatched by Biya to hand humanitarian assistance to victims of the floods.

 He says people should stop constructing houses in forbidden areas.

 “We have come here to assist victims of the floods. We have to ask the local population to work hand in hand with the local administrative authorities and with the government,” he said. “When the local administrative authorities tell you that you should not build in swampy areas, you have to follow [obey] them because they are defending your own rights. If you go and invest in swampy areas, you will lose your investments.”

Nji handed to the victims food items, blankets, mattresses and first aid drugs.

The last time floods of a similar magnitude hit Douala was seven years ago. Environmental researcher Wilfred Mbah Pokam of the university of Yaounde one says the floods could be linked to the changes in climate all of Africa has been witnessing.

 “What happens over the Kalahari region which is a dry area over southern Africa, strongly impacts the climate here in central Africa,” he said. “It is a region of the world where the temperature is very high, so it is like a desert. And because of this dry area, the temperature is higher over this area and a bit low over central Africa and because of the longitude when these winds are very strong, we have less rainfall over central Africa and when they are a bit low, we have more rainfall.”

 Pokam said floods in Douala, the most densely populated city in Cameroon, can be associated  with changing rainfall patterns, resulting from climate change. He says pressure on urban land and resources is sharply increasing meaning that many more people are likely to suffer when floods occur. He also says poor urban planning is not helping the situation.

Cameroon says the new master urbanization plan will take into consideration improving drainage systems and stopping the illegal occupation of riverbeds and wetlands.

Source: VOA

Cameroonian President Paul Biya held talks in Yaounde with a special adviser to Burkina Faso President Roch Marc Christian Kaboré on a range of issues which included health and security.

According to a statement from the presidency, Biya and Thierry Hot spoke about security, fighting the COVID-19 pandemic and governance.

Burkina Faso and Cameroon have their own security challenges with the insecurity in both countries resulting in the deaths of thousands of people and the displacement of thousands of others.

Burkina Faso has been struggling with jihadist violence since 2015 which has resulted in the killings of several people. Christian religious leaders and Muslim religious leaders, whom jihadists do not consider radical enough, are targeted by the extremists.

Cameroon, meanwhile, has been embroiled in conflict since 2017 when separatists from the Anglophone regions sought to form a breakaway state called Ambazonia.

As regards COVID-19, Cameroon has recorded 18,662 confirmed cases and 408 deaths while Burkina Faso has reported significantly less with 1,338 cases and 55 deaths, according to the Africa CDC.

Hot, who spoke to journalists after the meeting, said: “We are sharing experiences of good practices in those sectors.”

Hot said there was a coming together of views between the administrations of both countries. He added that the convergence reflected the excellent relations the two countries enjoyed.

Source: Africa.cgtn

The Southern Cameroons Interim Government has accused La Republique du Cameroun and its leadership of seeking continues bloodshed over Yaounde’s recent plan of building refugee makeshift camps in Eyumojok to transfer Ambazonian refugee from neighboring Nigeria into them.

Vice President Dabney Yerima informed the Southern Cameroons war cabinet late on Monday that Ambazonia Intelligence Services are already carrying out an investigation and that any attempt by the French Cameroun governor to visit Ambazonia refugees in Nigeria’s Cross River State will be met with a stonewall.

Dabney Yerima said the French Cameroun regime is presently putting Southern Cameroons refugees in Nigeria under immense pressure to return to the war ravaged territory. The exiled Southern Cameroons leader further noted that it is impossible to force the Ambazonian populations that flee to Cross River and Taraba States in Nigeria to return to Southern Cameroons.

Yerima stated that due to the severe escalation in the armed conflict in the Southern Cameroons and gross human rights abuses registered on a daily basis with women and children bearing the brunt, the Southern Cameroons Interim Government will take part in the International Conference on the armed conflict in Southern Cameroons to hold from October 30 to November 1 in the United States.  

By Chi Prudence Asong