Hundreds flee Cameroon village after rebels murder chief
The fleeing civilians are asking for help in neighbouring towns. The incident took place a day after another English-speaking chief was abducted.
CAPE TOWN, November 9 (ANA) – Hundreds of villagers have fled a village in Cameroon’s troubled English-speaking South-West Region after their chief was killed by rebels.
The rebels killed the chief and torched his palace on Friday evening, according to the Voice of America (VOA) news.
The incident took place a day after another English-speaking chief was abducted. His whereabouts are still unknown.
The fleeing civilians sought help in neighbouring towns.
Palm oil merchant Isaac Njoh, 52, told VOA that he fled from Liwu La-Malale after heavily armed rebels attacked the village and set the chief’s residence on fire.
He said the villagers were attending a meeting with their traditional ruler when heavily armed men attacked and started shooting into the air.
The armed men set the palace buildings on fire, but the villagers were able to escape safely. Njoh said many of the villagers who escaped to the neighbouring town of Buea have nowhere to stay.
Malomba Esembe, who represents the area in Cameroon’s national assembly, said the rebels slaughtered Molinga Francis Nangoh, the village chief of Liwu La-Malale.
“This is another affront to the sacredness of human life, to the solemnity of traditional institutions and to the sorrow of a people who are still mourning their children who were wickedly slain in Kumba on October 24.
“I am disturbed by this news and hereby convey my deepest sympathy to the people of Liwu La-Malale. I condemn in the strongest terms this act of wickedness, for one other life lost is one too many,” he said.
Cameroon’s government has confirmed the killing and blamed separatist fighters. No one has claimed responsibility for the attack.
Last week the Cameroonian government gave an official burial ceremony to the seven schoolchildren who were killed in Kumba when a group of unidentified armed men stormed the Mother Francisca International Bilingual Academy and opened fire on October 24. Thirteen other children were wounded.
Bernard Okalia Bilai, governor of the South-West Region, called for calm and said the military had been deployed to secure the area and find the killers. He asked the fleeing civilians to return.
In September, Cameroon territorial administration minister Paul Atanga Nji held a series of meetings and asked chiefs who fled separatist conflicts to return to their palaces.
Atem Ebako, chief of the English-speaking south-western village of Talangaye, said the attack on a chief and the burning of his palace will scare traditional rulers from returning to their villages to participate in the December 6 regional election as requested by the government.
“The minister made it abundantly clear to us that it would not be properly seen that the regional council elections that are coming for which the real actors are chiefs, that such an event is taking place and the chiefs are outside. That the government is going to put up a package to accompany the chiefs back to their palaces and we are still expecting that to happen,” he said.
Chiefs suspected of collaborating with the central government in Yaoundé to fight the rebels have been victims of attacks from suspected rebels since the conflict worsened in 2017, VOA said.
Violence in the anglophone regions over the past three years has claimed an estimated 3,000 lives and caused the displacement of more than 730,000 civilians, according to Human Rights Watch.
In June, the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) said that for a second year running Cameroon topped the list as the most neglected crisis on the planet in 2019.
– African News Agency (ANA); Editing by Yaron Blecher