Cameroon: Presidency admits massacre of 13 civilians by army

The Cameroonian presidency admitted on Tuesday that 13 civilians had been killed by three soldiers and auxiliaries in a village in the north-western English-speaking separatist area in mid-February.

The United Nations had revealed that dring the night of 13 to 14 February, 13 civilians, including 10 children (nine under the age of five) and two pregnant women, were killed in the Nargbuh neighborhood of the village of Ntumbo, a killing that sparked an international outcry.

Yaounde had so far denied any responsibility on the part of its army.

Two months after the massacre of the 13 civilians, Yaoundé finally acknowledged the involvement of its army, after an investigation was opened following international pressure on President Paul Biya.

Three soldiers and a self-defense group “stormed” a separatist rebel base and, “after exchanges of fire”, they “discovered that three women and ten children had died as a result of their action,” the Cameroonian presidency announced in a statement read on national radio. “Panicked, the three soldiers, assisted by auxiliaries, tried to cover up the facts with fires,” the statement said.

Exactions and crimes committed on both sides are frequent, according to international NGOs, in the two regions populated by the Cameroonian Anglophone minority in the north-west, where for the past three years, separatist rebel groups and security forces have been fighting each other.