Cameroon

YAOUNDE, March 28 (Xinhua) -- An attack by terror group in a village in Cameron's Far North region Saturday night has killed 3 civilians and one soldier, security sources said on Sunday.

The heavily armed militants came on several vehicles and motorcycles and set fire to shops, hangars, and began shooting indiscriminately during the assault in Dabanga village of the region, according to several local sources.

Local officials said at least three civilians and one soldier were killed during the attack. Three Boko Haram insurgents were also killed in the army's riposte.

YAOUNDE, Dec. 6 (Xinhua) -- Cameroon's first ever regional elections polling ended on Sunday evening despite interruptions by armed separatists in the country's English-speaking regions.

Authorities said by the time voting ended at 6 p.m. local time, there had been no reports of major incidents that could derail the elections.

YAOUNDE (Reuters) - Cameroon holds its first ever regional election on Sunday, which the government says hands more power to the provinces but opponents fear only maintains President Paul Biya’s long hold on power.

Biya hopes the vote will appease critics who say he has long neglected the Central African country’s 10 regions, and end a four-year separatist insurgency in the English-speaking west which has become the greatest threat to his near 40-year rule.

Separatist fighters have vowed to disrupt the vote in the Northwest and Southwest regions.

DOUALA (Reuters) - Police and gendarmes in Cameroon used tear gas and water cannon to disperse protesters calling for an end to President Paul Biya’s near 40-year rule in the commercial hub of Douala on Tuesday, Reuters witnesses said.

The protest was called by Biya’s rival Maurice Kamto of the Cameroon Renaissance Movement party, who hopes to spark a popular revolt, the likes of which have been seen in other African nations such as Mali and Burkina Faso.

YAOUNDE, Aug. 2 (Xinhua) -- A Cameroonian military plane crashed in a bush during landing at Maroua Airport in the country's Far North region on Sunday, but there were no fatalities, local authorities said.

The plane sped off the runway following landing and crashed in the bush, authorities said.

Several people, including civilians and soldiers, were injured and were immediately rushed to the hospital to receive medical attention.

DOUALA (Reuters) - Suspected militants from Islamist group Boko Haram killed 15 people and wounded six others in a grenade attack on a camp for displaced people in northern Cameroon on Sunday, a security source and a local official told Reuters.

In the early hours, assailants threw a grenade into a group of sleeping people inside the camp in the village of Nguetchewe, said district mayor, Medjeweh Boukar. The camp is home to around 800 people, he said.

The village is located in the Mozogo district, close to the Nigerian border in the Far North region.

YAOUNDE, April 22 (NNN-AGENCIES) —Cameroon has admitted that soldiers acting alongside a militia shot dead 13 civilians, including 10 children, in the restive north-west of the country.

Officials had initially denied the army was involved in the killings in Ntumbo in February.

In a statement, Cameroon’s presidency said three soldiers along with members of a vigilante group had stormed a separatist rebel base.

It suggested the deaths were accidental but soldiers tried to cover them up.

YAOUNDE, Dec 19 (NNN-AGENCIES) — A bill granting special status to Cameroon’s two crisis-hit anglophone regions was passed by lawmakers on Wednesday, national radio said, an attempt to ease two years of bloody violence.

If the Senate approves the devolution law and it comes into force, the western areas where separatists are fighting government troops will be able to develop their own education and justice policies, it said.

YAOUNDE, Dec. 2 (Xinhua) -- The Cameroonian government ruled out the possibility of postponing general elections scheduled for February 2020, a government spokesperson said on Monday.

"The government condemns all maneuvers that amount to blackmail and one-upmanship, and denounces the various foreign attempts to interfere, which are in violation of our laws, and which are advocating further postponements, indefinite postponements, of announced legislative and municipal elections," Cameroon's government spokesperson Emmanuel Rene Sadi told a press conference late Monday.

YAOUNDE, Nov. 11 (Xinhua) -- Four armed separatists suspected of murdering an officer of the Cameroon armed forces were captured on Monday in Muyuka, a locality in the troubled English-speaking region of Southwest, according to the army.

They were ambushed and arrested in their camp by the military who also seized their weapons. The operation was successful thanks to the collaboration of the public, the army said.

The officer Jean Noel Ndongo was kidnapped by the separatists and then buried alive in the locality last week, according to security reports.