Bamenda: Men in military attire ‘slaughter’ 12 persons within 48 hours!.

The persons were killed in Nacho Junction in Atuh Azire, Bamenda II Subdivision and Awing Quarter in the Abangoh vicinity in the Bamenda I Subdivision. 

The separate incidents of killings which many fear may not be unrelated have left many city dwellers speechless. Local sources said the killings were carried out by men in military attire.

Around 7:30p.m yesterday, seven corpses among them those of two women were spotted at Nacho Junction in the regional capital. Among the lifeless bodies, The Guardian Post gathered, were the remains of a man and his wife.

The discoveries threw residents of the area into confusion. No authority was spotted at the areas in the midst of the confusion that gripped the population. It was unclear if there were other corpses outside the spot where the seven corpses were found.

Yesterday’s development comes a day after locals of Abangoh neighbourhood not also far from where the seven corpses were spotted woke to other ‘mysterious’ killings.

This involved five youth who were literarily shot to death in the night of Friday breaking Saturday July 15. 

Many said the boys were summarily executed at close range, given the bullet wounds on their corpses. Others qualified the killings as an incident of “slaughter”. 

Most of the body parts were shattered by bullets with blood flooded in the area were the youngsters were shot. 

In the face of the controversy surrounding the incident, many have continued to maintain that, the boys were shot and killed by individuals who wore military paraphernalia.

Other respondents told The Guardian Post that they only heard sounds of gun shots before waking from bed to behold the carnage that had been committed.

The sorrowful faces at the scene of the incident Saturday morning, spoke of the pain which the incident has brought to bear in the minds of the population.

As at yesterday, some families are said to have identified their relatives from the piled bodies and took them away for burial. While the population has been left without explanation, many have been exposed to several narratives.

There are those who are blaming the incident on security forces while some say it was the handiwork of separatist fighters who put on military uniform to deceive the public.

Other accounts hold that those killed were drug dealers who had reportedly abducted a young lady, demanding ransom. 

Their deal, the same account hold, is said to have turned sour after security forces battled to rescue the abducted young lady, leaving the victims to crumble in crossfire.

There are also reports that before the killings, unidentified persons had reportedly been terrorising the Abangoh neighbourhood in Bamenda.

With no one taking responsibility for the killings, those who have a memory of incidents that have happened in over six years and still counting of the bloodletting in the English-speaking Regions know that such incidents are not new.

Since 2017 when the Anglophone crisis morphed into an armed conflict, government and separatists have traded accusations over such incidents severally.

Bamenda is not new to such killings since the conflict escalated. On Saturday January 23, 2021, at least four teenagers were killed in Meta Quarters of the same city. 

When that incident happened like the one of this weekend, it was mired in narratives of security forces accusing separatist fighters and vice versa.

Other towns that have recorded such coldblooded killings of teenagers are Pinyin and Menka, in Santa Subdivision, Mezam Division of the North West Region. The same has happened in Kumba, Bole Bakundu, Ekondo-Titi, Muyuka and other localities in the South West Region. 

Extra-judicial killings have remained common feature of the armed conflict in the North West and South West Regions. 

Just last week, international organisation, Amnesty International, AI, released a report in which it accused security forces and Amba fighters of excesses within the current conflict.