An army vehicle jumped on an improvised explosive device in Bafut, in the division of Mezam, North West region.
An army convoy was targeted by a homemade bomb in the North West region on Sunday. On a video broadcast by separatists, we see an army vehicle pulverized by an explosive device during the passage of an army convoy. The attack was claimed by Ambazonians (Bafut 7 Kata) in this same video sequence widely relayed on the web.
Concordant sources indicate that several soldiers perished in the explosion. We talk about at least three soldiers killed and many others injured. But no official source has reported on this attack which targeted Cameroonian soldiers in this region plagued by separatism.
Attacks against government forces are recurrent in the North-West and South-West. The separatist conflict has taken a new step with the entry into the running of improvised explosive devices (IEDs). In recent reports, human rights organizations have denounced abuses committed by both parties against civilian populations in these two regions.
Since 2016, Cameroon’s English-speaking regions have been in the throes of a political and security crisis between armed separatist groups seeking independence for their self-proclaimed state of Ambazonia, comprising the North-West and South-West regions, and the Cameroonian security forces. The violence has caused about 6,000 deaths and a major humanitarian crisis, with almost 600,000 people internally displaced within the Anglophone and neighboring regions, and over 77,000 forced to become refugees in Nigeria.
The crisis in the Anglophone regions has received little media and international attention and has been considered one of the most neglected worldwide. In her June 8 briefing to the United Nations Security Council on the situation in the central African region, Assistant Secretary-General for Africa Martha Pobee urged “the international community to step up support to national efforts toward a peaceful resolution” of the Anglophone crisis. On July 25 and 26, French President Emmanuel Macron visited Cameroon, and met with his counterpart Paul Biya. Macron did not publicly address crucial human rights issues, including human rights abuses committed by both security forces and separatist groups in the Anglophone regions.
