Nine people kidnapped and a church set on fire in an attack in anglophone region of Cameroon

Sep. 20 (EUROPA PRESS) –

At least nine people were kidnapped on Friday in an attack perpetrated by unidentified armed people against a church in the Southwest Region, one of the two with an Anglophone majority in Cameroon, as confirmed by the National Episcopal Conference of Cameroon (CENC).

The CENC spokesman, Humphrey Tatah Mbuy, has indicated that the assailants have demanded the payment of a ransom. “They have not said which group they belong to,” he pointed out, before stressing that during the attack a church was set on fire in the town of Nchang, located on the outskirts of Mamfe.

Thus, he has detailed that the kidnapped are eight priests and one horse and has emphasized that “it is the first time that there is such an attack”. “There were kidnappings of religious in the past, but they were isolated cases. An attack like this seems planned, with the church set on fire and nine kidnapped. It is a unique case,” he explained, according to the Cameroonian news portal ActuCameroun.

In this line, Archbishop Andrey Nkea, head of the ecclesial province of Bamenda, has pointed out in statements to the British television channel BBC that the assailants considered the church as “a soft target to obtain money” through ransom claims for the liberation of the religious.

Cameroon’s Anglophone regions — Northwest and Southwest — have been rocked by conflict following the repression of separatist movements following Ambazonia’s self-proclamation of independence on October 1, 2017.

The previous year, this area -another part of the British colonies in Africa but which decided to join French Cameroon- was the scene of peaceful protests to demand greater autonomy or independence, arguing discrimination by the central authorities, also in language topics.

Since then, armed groups have proliferated and support for the separatists, until then quite marginal, has increased. The government has responded with a harsh crackdown, during which human rights organizations have accused the security forces of committing atrocities.