The Mayor of Belo, Ngong Innocent, was shot dead in a suspected Ambazonia separatist attack this Monday, May 20, in Belo, Boyo Division of the North West Region of Cameroon.
Aghi Aaron Ngong, Inspector of Basic Education, and a Municipal Councillor, whose name MMI is yet to obtain, were also killed during the attack, according to local media reports.
Reports say the mayor and the two others were targeted and killed as they were heading to the grandstand to commemorate the 52nd edition of the National Day.
According to a local official who requested anonymity due to lack of authorization to speak to the press, the officials were shot along a 200-metre stretch between the town council office and the Belo municipal grandstand, where celebrations were scheduled to take place.
Aghi Aaron Ngong, Inspector of Basic Education
The day, which marks the abolition of the two-state federation in Cameroon, was commemorated across the country amid timid participation in most parts of the English-speaking Regions.
Prior to celebrations, administrative authorities in the two crisis-hit regions pressured civil servants and the rest of the population to defy separatists’ ghost towns and calls for boycotts and turn out massively for the celebrations.
Ngong Innocent – Mayor of Belo
The Mayor of Belo is the latest victim of thousands of people who have been killed in the Anglophone Regions for attempting to participate in national events during the past seven years of the armed conflict.
Government authorities are yet to react to the latest development from Belo, which adds to a number of killings that have rocked the English-speaking regions in the last week.
Belo is one of the hotspots of separatist activities in the North West Region.
Prior to the National Day celebrations, armed separatists had imposed a lockdown in the area and other parts of the two Anglophone Regions to frustrate the event, which they had long “banned” since the escalation of the Anglophone Crisis.
