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Yaoundé (AFP) – Gunmen kidnapped 79 school students on Monday in an English-speaking region of Cameroon where separatists are fighting an armed campaign for independence, security and government sources said.
The abductions, the worst incident so far in 13 months of unrest, a day before longtime President Paul Biya was in office.
The students were abducted along with their principal, a teacher and a driver, the official government said.
A source close to the school confirmed the kidnapping of the pupils, saying however: "All we know is that the abducted students are mainly boys."
The first mass abduction in Cameroon follows two major incidents in neighbouring Nigeria, where the Islamist group Boko Haram snatched more than 200 schoolgirls from the Borno state town of Chibok in April 2014.
Some 107 girls have been released, but the Islamist group abducted scores more schoolgirls from neighboring Yobe state in February this year.
The students were enrolled at the Presbyterian Secondary School in Bamenda, capital of Cameroon's Northwest Region – one of two regions hit by attacks by English-speaking activists who had a brutal crackdown by the authorities.
"The search for the hostages has been launched – every man has been called," the government source said, speaking after a crisis meeting.
Elsewhere in the same region, a high-ranking official was also seized, a security official told AFP.
The school's website says that the student body numbers more than 700, drawn from "all the religious and linguistic origins of Cameroon."
The kidnappings coincides with an upsurge of political tensions in the majority French-speaking country.
It comes after elections on October 7 in which 85-year-old Biya, who has ruled the country with an iron fist for 35 years, was credited with 71.3 percent of the vote.
The polls however were marred by allegations of widespread fraud, low vote turnout and violence.
Around a fifth of Cameroon's 22 million people are English-speaking – a minority of dates back to the colonial period.
Cameroon, once a German colony, was divided between Britain and France after World War I.
The French colony gained independence in 1960, becoming Cameroon. The following year, the British-ruled Southern Cameroons was amalgamated into it, giving rise to the Northwest and Southwest regions.
But resentment at the majority, especially in education and the judiciary, began to build.
In 2016, demands for greater autonomy has been rebuffed by Biya.
– 'Republic of Ambazonia' –
As radicals took the ascendancy, the English-speaking movement declared the creation of the "Republic of Ambazonia" in the Northwest and Neighboring Southwest Region on October 1, 2017.
No country has recognized the self-declared state.
The separatists have been gunned down by the police, boycotted and torched schools and attacked other perceived symbols of the Cameroonian state.
They have decreed a boycott of shools, saying that the French-speaking education system marginalizes English-speaking students.
At the beginning of the school year in September, several secondary schools were attacked, a headmaster was killed and a teacher was badly mutilated.
The authorities have responded with a massive crackdown by police and troops.
At least 400 civilians have been killed by members of the security forces, according to a toll compiled by non-governmental organizations.
The conflict has had a resurgence in the Southwest region.
More than 300,000 people have fled violence, many of them living in the forests, and some across the border in Nigeria.
In the October 7 election, the turnout was 15 percent in the Northwest and 15 percent in the Southwest – goal Biya won more than two-thirds of the vote in both regions.
