At least 11 primary school staff members were kidnapped by armed separatists on Tuesday in Kumbo, a town in the restive Anglophone Northwest region of Cameroon.
Tuesday’s incident occurred 10 days after gunmen stormed a school in another western town, killing at least seven children. No one has claimed responsibility for either of the raids.
“They ( the armed separatists) initially abducted the teachers and the pupils and later released the children, while warning them to go home and never come back to school again,” a local official who opted for anonymity told Xinhua.
The army said a search and rescue mission of the teachers is in progress in the locality.
Some separatist leaders including Eric Tataw who is advocating for the safe resumption of schools demanded the “immediate” release of the teachers.
Schools resumed in Cameroon in October but some armed separatists have threatened on social media to paralyse school activities, stressing that only “inclusive dialogue and ceasefire” will assure the safety of schools in the two Anglophone regions of Northwest and Southwest where they have been clashing with government forces since 2017 in a bid to create a new nation they call “Ambazonia.”
More than 3,000 people have died since 2017 in the conflict between the Cameroonian government and English-speaking separatists who want to break away from the primarily French-speaking state.
Human rights groups say both sides have committed widespread atrocities, with the separatists often targeting schools that fail to comply with their demands to close.
