Cameroon: 78 students released as hostages

The 78 schoolchildren kidnapped by gunmen Sunday night in Cameroon were released Wednesday. That's what Samuel Forki tells about the negotiations, the Reuters news agency reports. The pilot was also released. The director and a teacher are still being held in an unknown place in the woods.

It is unclear who took the two teachers, the driver and the teenagers from the Reformed school. According to the Forki priest and an army spokesman, the militants are separatists, but a spokesman for the separatists denies it. In any case, it is clear that the kidnappers are in English. Cameroon is involved in a civil war between English-speaking independence fighters and the French-speaking central government.

"Ambo boys"

On social media, men calling themselves "Ambo boys" shared a video probably showing the kidnapped students. Several parents confirmed seeing their children on it. Ambo boys is a reference to the state of Ambazia that some English-speaking rebels want to found.

In Cameroon, however, the theory circulates that the government itself is behind the kidnapping, in order to blacken the rebels. Proponents of this theory point out that schools are guarded by government soldiers. According to them, such an abduction would have been impossible without the help of the army.

According to Forki, 11 students were abducted by the same activists last month. Then, the school would have gradually paid a ransom to recover them.

Read also: Schools are a target in Cameroon

French Government

Cameroonian President Paul Biya decided last year not to be violent Activists, teachers, judges and anglophone lawyers have tried to get more rights for anglophones.

Activists then took over and the country was lit in a civil war in which hundreds of people were killed. The separatists are competing in the west of the country for their own English-speaking state, distinct from French-speaking Cameroon. Meanwhile, half a million people have been displaced. Nearly 30,000 Cameroonians have fled to Nigeria.

The children were abducted in a suburb of the regional capital, Bamenda: