Anglophone Crisis: Military extrajudicially kills two in Kumba

By David Atangana.

Two yet-to-be-identified individuals have reportedly been shot dead in Kumba town Meme division of the restive South West region of Cameroon. The two were killed on Sunday, June 25, 2023, in separate incidents.

Reports say one of them was an armless civilian and the other a captured separatist fighter of the separatist movement.

A source told MMI that, the civilian killed had challenged a gendarmerie officer to lawfully present a warrant authorizing him to arrest a citizen who was in their midst.

“This man was removed from a veteran club meeting. Gendarmes had come to arrest someone and he challenged them to present an arrest warrant,” an eye witness told MMI adding that, “Without delay, the gendarme officer pulled the trigger shooting him at close range in the chest.”

So close was the range of the shot that the bullet is reported to have gone through the victim and hit another person nearby:

“the bullet penetrated through his heart and hit another person in the arm who was standing behind him,” the eyewitness continued.

While the targeted victim died on the spot, the one caught by the bullet in the arm was rushed to a health facility.

Meanwhile, on the same day, a captured suspected separatist fighter was also shot dead after he attempted to escape from military captivity.

According to information MMI was privy to, the fighter attempted to escape after soldiers were mobilizing following the shooting to death of the armless civilian in the earlier incident.

“Another person also killed yesterday was an Amba fighter who attempted to run from military custody here in Fiango,” another source narrated noting, “Actually two people were killed here yesterday but the corpse of the Amba fighter was not shown to the public.”

Cases of extrajudicial killings are rampant in the Anglophone regions of Cameroon where both separatist fighters and the military have killed thousands of civilans in the ongoing conflict.

Despite repeated assurances from the government that action will be taken against soldiers who kill civilians, no one has so far answered for their actions, increasing the level of impunity.