RFI
Cameroon: the army announces having killed the head of the commando responsible for the massacre of a school
On October 24, an armed group broke into a private college in Kumba in the English-speaking Southwest region. Seven schoolchildren were dead. The tragedy had shocked the whole country. The authorities accused Anglophone separatists of having carried out this attack. During the night from Sunday to Monday, February 8, the Cameroonian armed forces conducted “a major sweeping operation” in the vicinity of the village of Balangui, following information provided by the local population, according to a statement from the Ministry of Defense. There followed an exchange of fire between a separatist group and the military. Assessment according to the authorities, five rebels killed and several wounded and on the run. The army announces in particular the death of “General Above The Law”, the leader of an independentist armed group which controlled the area. It is he who would have led the commando which attacked the school of Kumba and made seven deaths among the pupils. Shortly after the massacre, last October, the armed forces had already announced that they had killed some responsible for the attack. Contacted by RFI, Captain Cyrille Atonfack Guémo, spokesman for the Ministry of Defense, explains that “he It was about a group of ten assailants who were gradually neutralized. The most recent, the so-called General Above The Law was the leader. “Information from the local population For Elie Smith, journalist and analyst specializing in the area, it is interesting to note that the army was able to carry out this operation thanks to information from the local population.” There is a certain change in dynamics on the field because at the beginning it was an ideological conflict. And those who had taken up arms did not kidnap, did not terrorize their own population. The majority are no longer even separatists but they are bandits, and that causes the English-speaking population that they claimed to defend to turn against them. The population is starting to give information to the security forces or cooperate with the Cameroonian army. This is why the army is having success on the ground. According to him, this testifies to a certain exhaustion of the Anglophone crisis. Even if he recalls that the basic problems are still not resolved.
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