Cameroon: dozens dead and injured in attack by Anglophone separatists

At least twenty people, including women and children, have been killed and another ten injured in a dawn raid on a village by Anglophone separatists in western Cameroon, where these rebels and the army have been fighting each other for seven years.
The English-speaking gunmen attacked a village in a neighborhood in the town of Mamfe, setting houses on fire and killing villagers as they slept, according to the local authorities. Since the late 2016, a deadly conflict has pitted Anglophone pro-independence armed groups against the security forces, with the former fighting to carve out an independent state called Ambazonia in western Cameroon. The separatists have repeatedly clashed with government forces and carried out attacks, kidnappings and killings in the region. Both sides have been accused of committing crimes against civilians by United Nations and international NGOs, in regions populated mainly by the English-speaking minority of this predominantly French-speaking Central African country.
“The situation is under control and the population should not panic,” said a local senior official, adding that security forces were searching the area. No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, but the state media attributed the attack to separatist rebels systematically referred to as “terrorists” by the authorities. Decades of grievances over perceived discrimination by the Francophone majority crystallized into a series of protests and riots in 2016, whose violent suppression helped to spark a full-blown conflict between Cameroon’s armed forces and Ambazonian separatist rebel groups. Cameroon, a Central African country of nearly 30 million, has been ruled with an iron fist for 41 years by 90-year-old President Paul Biya.