Separatists Claim Responsibility For Rocket Attack In Northwest Cameroon

Two Cameroonian soldiers and one civilian were killed Sunday, Aug. 28, when Anglophone separatists attacked a military convoy in Bui, Northwest Cameroon. 

The mayor of Nkambe, Wirngo Buba Kibo, said that “on Sunday, while a convoy of the Cameroon army was on patrol, it fell on an ambush by separatists in the Wat zone, near the town of Nkambe in the northwest of the country.” 

“The separatists attacked the convoy with the aid of a rocket. The death toll is two soldiers and one civilian killed,” he said, adding that a military vehicle in which the soldiers were travelling was destroyed.

The attack was confirmed by the regional governor, Lele L’Afrique, who called on the population to cooperate with the defence forces to combat “secessionist terrorists”.

The said attack was later claimed by a faction of the separatists called Bui Unity Warriors, who have been very active in the zone.

A separatist insurrection has gripped Cameroon’s Northwest and Southwest English-speaking regions since 2016 following protests by teachers and lawyers against the marginalisation of the English-speaking Cameroonians by their majority French-speaking compatriots.

The insurrection has since led to the deaths of thousands of people and the displacement of hundreds of thousands of others internally and in neighbouring countries such as Nigeria.

Since 2017, tens of soldiers and policemen have been killed by separatist combatants, while some observers put the number of security personnel killed in the hundreds.

The exact number of separatists killed since the beginning of the conflict is not known.