There have been shock, consternation and widespread condemnation following the death of two children who succumbed to stray bullets in Kumbo and Muea last Friday and the bloody Sunday service at the Presbyterian Church in Bali yesterday that left one woman death and the pastor injured.
As the over four years long Anglophone crisis rocking the North West and South West regions of Cameroon continue to rage, civilians continue to pay the hardest price.
Last weekend, three died, including two children meanwhile two including one kid sustained injuries following gun exchanges between Government forces and Ambazonia fighters and a deliberate shooting by unknown armed men.
The first gun exchange around the Saint Theresa Catholic Primary School in Kumbo, Bui Division of the restive North West region Friday August 20 left one pupil death on the spot, meanwhile another who sustained injuries was ferried to the hospital for treatment.
That same day, a military-separatist confrontation led to the death of a young boy. The victim reports say had gone to a roadside makeshift shop to repair his phone but was picked in the head by a bullet, which penetrated the container of the shop in which he was.
The third and most condemned incident took place Sunday August 22 at the Presbyterian Church Ntafoang in Bali subdivision. Eyewitness accounts have it that men dressed like Government defence and security forces stormed the church premises during service and fired bullets indiscriminately towards them.
One worshipper whose name Agence Cameroon Presse only got as Grace died following the shootings. The pastor who was conducting service by the time of the shootings received a bullet in the arm and was transported to the hospital after the men had left.
The shootings have been widely condemned by many including Barrister Akere Muna who described it as a sacrilege. "This is what we have become! My heart bleeds for the victims, their families and all inhabitants of Bali", The bâtonnier lamented in a tweet.
For the three cases, no official statement has yet been made by authorities neither has the Presbyterian Church reacted to the shooting in one of its churches. Meanwhile, the Ambazonia interim Government in a Facebook post accused soldiers of being behind the shootings.
The Anglophone crisis, which began as a street protest by teachers’ trade unions and Lawyers associations, will enter its fifth year in the coming month of November. The crisis has caused untold sufferings o the population in the regions. Attacks between Government forces and separatists have displaced more than 700,000 civilians and forced over 60,000 across the border to Nigeria, according to the United Nations report of April 2021.
Ariane Foguem
