Cameroon Bans Motorbikes In Bali After Separatists Killed 5 Police Officers
The ban is coming after some Police officers were murdered by separatists who used IEDs on the police officers.
The Senior Divisional Officer for Mezam Division in the Northwest Region of Cameroon has banned the operation of motorbikes in Bali sub-division following the killing of five police officers by suspected Anglophone separatists riding motorbikes in Bali T Junction on Sunday, July 18, 2021.
In a decision signed and made public on Tuesday, July 20, Simon Emile Mooh stated that the ban would last for three months and could be extended.
He warned that any person or group of persons contravening the ban would be punished in accordance with the provisions of the regulations.
A video published on social media shows that on July 18, armed separatists ambushed and killed no fewer than five police officers and destroyed their vehicle around T -Junction in Bali sub-division.
The fighters detonated an Improvised Explosive Device (IED), rendering the Police pickup immovable before opening fire on the police who were in the vehicle, killing all of them.
The armed separatists who carried out the attack are reported to have made away with guns, helmets, identity cards, and other security paraphernalia.
The Anglophone separatist fighters operating in Bali burned down a security facility in the town last week.
It is believed that the order prohibiting the circulation of motorbikes in Bali will improve the security situation given that armed separatists are known to always use motorbikes.
A similar order was on March 13, 2020, signed by Governor Adolphe Lele Lafrique Tchoffo Deben of the Northwest indefinitely prohibiting the circulation of motorbikes from 6 pm to 5:30 am daily in some divisions of the Northwest Region.
Demonstrations organised by lawyers and teachers against the marginalisation of English-speaking Cameroonians in November 2016, later morphed into ongoing running gun battles between state forces and armed separatist fighters in the two predominantly English-speaking regions of Northwest and Southwest, leading to kidnappings for ransom, burning down of houses, the closure of schools and beheadings.
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