The Cameroonian presidency admitted on Tuesday April 21 that 13 civilians, including 10 children, had been killed by three soldiers and auxiliaries in a village in the separatist English-speaking northwest in mid-February. Yaoundé had hitherto denied any responsibility for his army in this massacre.

During the night of 13-14 February, according to the UN, 23 civilians, including 15 children (nine under the age of 5) and two pregnant women, had been killed in the Nargbuh neighborhood of the village of Ntumbo, a massacre that had sparked an international outcry.

>> Read: A village in English-speaking Cameroon targeted by an armed attack

Three soldiers and a vigilante group "stormed" a separatist rebel base and, "after an exchange of fire in which five terrorists were killed", they "discovered that three women and ten children had perished because of their action, "announced the Cameroonian presidency in a statement read on national radio. And to add: "Taken in panic, the three soldiers helped by certain members of the defense committee, tried to mask the facts by fires".

Abuses and crimes committed by both sides are frequent, according to international NGOs, in the two regions populated by the Anglophone Cameroonian minority in the northwest. For three years, separatist rebel groups and the security forces have clashed there.

Under international pressure, President Paul Biya demanded the opening of an investigation into the killing, the first conclusions of which were delivered on Tuesday evening. Until then, pressured by international NGOs who accused the army and an allied Fulani militia of having perpetrated the massacre, Yaoundé had denied it. The government claimed that the deaths of civilians were the result of an "unfortunate accident": the explosion of fuel containers following an exchange of fire between soldiers and separatists.

With AFP

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