Cameroon army blames accident for village 'massacre'
Cameroon's army on Mon denied opposition charges that it had massacred villagers found in a troubled English-speaking area, blaming instead an "unfortunate accident" due to an explosion of energy during a firefight.
Up to 22 civilians, 14 of them children, died found in the incident on Fri, according to the US -- deaths which opposition get-togethers blamed on users of the military.But army spokesman Colonel Cyrille Atonfack Guemo referred to the allegations as "duplicitous".
An army investigation, he said, discovered that the deaths happened just after fuel was placed ablaze throughout a gunfight with anglophone separatists. Five civilians -- a woman and four children -- passed away, and "seven terrorists" had been "neutralised", Atonfack told AFP in Libreville by mobile.
The deaths occurred in the village of Ntumbo in Cameroon's Northwest Area -- 1 of 2 English-speaking regions that have been grappling with separatist violence since October 2017.
More than 3,000 persons have died and at least 700,000 possess fled their homes. "It was quite simply an unfortunate incident, the collateral consequence of security operations in the region," Atonfack explained in a statement.
He said four soldiers and two gendarmes have been carrying out nighttime reconnaissance by walking near a residence that were "transformed right into a fortress" with a good stockpile of weapons.They came under heavy fire, and exchanges caused "several containers of energy to explode, followed by a blaze which spread several neighbouring homes", Atonfack said.
On Sunday, James Nunan, an area official with UN humanitarian coordination company OCHA, told AFP that "armed men" had killed as many as 22 civilians, including a pregnant girl and 14 small children.Eleven of the children were young ladies, said Nunan, head of OCHA's business office for the Northwest and Southwest regions.
Aid personnel contacted by AFP explained witnesses had told them that between 40 and 50 armed men -- some wearing army uniform plus some sporting masks entered Ngarbuh, a district of the village, before shooting inhabitants dead and burning them.
"They fired on persons and burned victims their bodies will be in an awful state," said an help worker, speaking on state of anonymity."People phoned us to state that soldiers had arrive and smashed down doors, opened fire in people and set homes on fire," Ntumbo resident Louis Panlanjo, an associate of an area association, told AFP.
"People took shelter in the centre of the village. There was about 800 of these."A resident who wished to continue to be anonymous told AFP by mobile that 35 bodies have been recovered and the army was at fault.
The Activity for the Rebirth of Cameroon (MRC), among the two main opposition parties, blamed "these crimes" mainly on the regime and the top of the security forces.An integral figure in the separatist movement, legal professional Felix Agbor Mballa, in a Facebook post as well accused "state defence forces" of carrying out the killings.
The army had previously denied any involvement in the deaths. English-speakers take into account nearly a 5th of Cameroon's inhabitants of 24 million, who are majority French-speaking.
Years of grievances in perceived discrimination snowballed right into a declaration of independence in October 2017 and a federal government crackdown.The declaration has not been recognized internationally although the federal government has lately decentralized a few of its powers.
The UN refugee agency said on Thursday that almost 8,000 people had fled into Nigeria from Cameroon in the previous two weeks to escape the fighting, taking the amount of refugees to almost 60,000.
Once considered a haven of steadiness found in central Africa, Cameroon has going back seven years seen the jihadist group Boko Haram kill soldiers and civilians found in the north.In the latest attack, three persons were killed on Saturday when Boko Haram militants set fire to around 100 homes, looted shops and stole grain, security officials said.
Meanwhile, the much-delayed trial was because of begin over Monday of seven soldiers accused of killing two females and their babies in 2015. However, the trial in the administrative centre Yaounde hadn't started by Monday evening.The murders, which found light through a video in the internet, were at first dismissed as "fake current information" by the federal government, which after investigated the incident and arrested seven suspects.
