According to local authorities, one person was killed yesterdayThursday morning during a homemade bomb attack in a market in Bamenda, in the North-West region plagued by the atrocities of the Anglophone crisis, six others, including an infant, were injured.
An explosive device created chaos at the Nkwen market in Bamenda yesterday Thursday morning after a loud detonation. “At around 11 a.m., an improvised explosive device was detonated by armed terrorists hiding in the Mobil Nkwen market,” reports the press release from the Bamenda Divisional Office.
Separatist attacks targeting civilians are commonplace in the South-West and North-West regions mainly populated by the Anglophone minority of this former French colony in predominantly French-speaking Central Africa. Since late 2016, a deadly conflict has pitted pro-independence armed groups against security forces in both regions, with each side regularly accused of crimes against civilians by international NGOs and the UN. The separatists regularly kill or kidnap civil servants, including teachers, or elected officials, whom they accuse of “collaborating” with the central government in Yaoundé. The army and police are accused of carrying out punitive expeditions against those they accuse of sympathizing with the separatists.
The explosion left “one dead” and “six civilians injured, including an eleven-month-old baby”. “All these female victims were stocking up in the said commercial space”, details the press release from the administrative authority, which called on the population to remain calm while reassuring that measures are being taken to catch the perpetrators of these acts. For the time being, the attack has not yet been claimed by the secessionist fighters, but they are the ones who are primarily accused.
The NGO Human Rights Watch (HRW) estimated that “at least 6,000 civilians have been killed by government forces and separatist fighters” in more than seven years of conflict
Lebledparle