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Early Monday morning, 82 people were kidnapped at the Presbyterian High School in Bamenda, capital of the northwestern province of Cameroon, according to government sources.
These are 79 students as well as the director, a teacher and a driver. The school has students aged 10 to 14 years old.
The Cameroonian army has launched a vast search operation.
No group has yet taken part in kidnappings, but the province's governor, Adolphe Lele Africa, points out militant separatists, the BBC reported.
The two western provinces were shaken by a separatist rebellion against the authoritarian government of President Paul Biya. Activists have previously called for a boycott of the school.
A video showing some of the Kidnapped children who have been filmed by one of the kidnappers are divided on social media.
The children look worried in front of the video, where they are tight in a room. Those who hold the camera call them to tell them their name and their origin.
They also repeat the following sentence: "Amba Boys" m removed from school yesterday and I do not know where I am.
Amba is an abbreviation of "Ambazonia", the name of the independent state that the separatists want to create.
Cameroon was formerly German colony but divided between France and Great Britain after the First World War. Most of the country ended up being under French rule, but a smaller part in the west became British. West Cameroon, Nigeria, was also run by the British.
At the time of independence, in 1960, the border between Cameroon and Nigeria was defined so that two English-speaking provinces, the Northwest (or North-West) and the South-West (South-West) ) are integrated in Cameroon.
French and English are the official languages of the country and hundreds of local languages are spoken. But francophones are by a large majority. A small fifth of the population resembles English.
People in the two western provinces I've had a moment, under the direction of teachers and lawyers, to protest what they perceive as discrimination against the English language and those who speak it.
Last year, security forces abandoned the demonstrations with violence. It is at this moment that the separatist movement has developed.
A spokesman for the Presbyterian Church in Cameroon, Fonki Samuel Forba, told the BBC that he had had contact with the kidnappers. He told the BBC that they had no claims of solvency.
– All they want is to close schools. And we promised to close them, "he says.
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