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Rights Group Accuses Cameroon Separatists of Abuse

"Armed separatist groups are kidnapping, terrorising, and killing civilians across the English-speaking regions with no apparent fear of being held to account by either their own leaders or Cameroonian law enforcement," Ilaria Allegrozzi, Human Rights Watch's senior central Africa researcher, has said in a report.

In one case detailed by HRW, separatists stormed a university campus, shot in the air and caused a stampede that injured at least five people. Fighters were retaliating against the university for resisting a lockdown they had declared in the area. Allegrozzi called on separatist group leaders to end civilian abuses committed by their fighters.

Cameroon is embattled by an ongoing civil war between pro-Anglophone and pro-Francophone factions. Both groups are fighting to capture the country's English-speaking north west and south west regions. Members of Cameroon's English speaking secessionist movement hope to carve out the two regions and form the independent state of Ambazonia.

InFocus

M.E. Kindzeka/VOA

Women protest, holding up a poster with images of atrocities committed in an ongoing conflict between government forces and armed separatists, in Bamenda, Cameroon, September 7, 2018.

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