Anglophone Cameroon: at least six teachers kidnapped in Kumbo
Buea, in Anglophone Cameroon, April 27, 2018 (illustrative image).
© ALEXIS HUGUET / AFP / Archives
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At least six teachers were abducted on the morning of Tuesday, November 3, from a Presbyterian school in Kumbo, in the English-speaking northwest region.
According to corroborating sources joined by RFI, the unidentified assailants were heavily armed.
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According to the testimony of teachers' unions, it was around 10 a.m. Tuesday that armed men entered the grounds of the Presbyterian primary school in Kumbo.
They gathered several dozen students from 4 to 12 years old, as well as all the teachers of the school, according to sources close to the religious, in order to take them to an undetermined place and to start negotiations in exchange of their release.
But the civil society of Kumbo and the Presbyterian Church of Cameroon mobilized quickly and obtained, in still unknown conditions, the release of the schoolchildren.
According to our information, it was the teachers who were targeted.
According to local media, the kidnappers allegedly ordered the children not to return to school.
► To read also: “Never again”: a week after the Kumba massacre, the women's march
Kidnappings on the rise in English-speaking Cameroon since 2017
The teachers are still being held captive.
The kidnappers demand a ransom.
Local and regional authorities were in a crisis meeting throughout the afternoon, but have not yet made any statements.
The kidnapping comes a week after
the attack on a school
in the southwest in which eight students were killed.
Kidnappings are more and more frequent in the two English-speaking regions of Cameroon, the scene since 2017 of a conflict between security forces and
separatist militiamen
.
► To read also: Murders of children in Kumba: President Biya criticized for his late reaction
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Cameroon
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"Never again": a week after the Kumba massacre, the women's march
Child murders in Kumba: President Biya criticized for his late reaction