Cameroon Army Blames Accident For Village 'Massacre'

Cameroon's army on Monday denied opposition charges that it had massacred villagers in a troubled anglophone region, blaming instead an "unfortunate accident" caused by an explosion of fuel during a firefight.

Up to 22 civilians, 14 of them children, died in the incident on Friday, according to the United Nations -- deaths which opposition parties blamed on members of the armed forces.

But army spokesman Colonel Cyrille Atonfack Guemo described the allegations as "duplicitous."

An army investigation, he said, found that the deaths happened after fuel was set ablaze during a gunfight with anglophone separatists.

Five civilians -- a woman and four children -- died, and "seven terrorists" were "neutralised," Atonfack told AFP in Libreville by phone.

The deaths occurred in the village of Ntumbo in Cameroon's Northwest Region -- one of two English-speaking regions that have been grappling with separatist violence since October 2017.

More than 3,000 people have died and at least 700,000 have fled their homes.

"It was quite simply an unfortunate accident, the collateral result of security operations in the region," Atonfack said in a statement.

He said four soldiers and two gendarmes had been carrying out nighttime reconnaissance on foot near a home that had been "transformed into a fortress" with a stockpile of weapons.

They came under heavy fire, and exchanges caused "several containers of fuel to explode, followed by a blaze which spread several neighbouring homes," Atonfack said

"This fire caused five casualties, a woman and four children, (a figure that is) far off from what is doing the rounds on social media," he added.

On Sunday, James Nunan, a local official with UN humanitarian coordination agency OCHA, told AFP that "armed men" had carried out the killings.

"Up to 22 civilians were killed, including a pregnant woman and several children," Nunan said, adding that 14 children -- including nine under age five -- were among the dead.

Eleven of the children were girls, said Nunan, head of OCHA's office for the Northwest and Southwest regions.

Aid workers contacted by AFP said witnesses had told them that between 40 and 50 armed men -- some wearing army uniform and some wearing masks -- entered Ngarbuh, a district of the village, before shooting inhabitants dead and burning them.

"They fired on people and burned victims -- their bodies are in a terrible state," said an aid worker, speaking on condition of anonymity.

"People phoned us to say that soldiers had come and smashed down doors, opened fire on people and set homes on fire," Ntumbo resident Louis Panlanjo, a member of a local assocation, told AFP.

"People took shelter in the centre of the village. There was about 800 of them."

A resident, speaking on condition of anonymity, told AFP in a phone interview that 35 bodies had been recovered and the army was to blame.

The Movement for the Rebirth of Cameroon (MRC), one of the country's two main opposition parties, issued a statement condemning the attacks.

"The dictatorial regime (and) the supreme head of the security and defence forces are chiefly responsible for these crimes," it said.

A key figure in the separatist movement, lawyer Felix Agbor Mballa, in a Facebook post also accused "state defence forces" of carrying out the killings.

The army had previously denied any involvement in the deaths.

On Monday, the much-delayed trial began in the capital of Yaounde of seven soldiers accused of the cold-blooded killing of two women and their babies in 2015.

The murders, which came to light through a video on the internet, were initially dismissed as "fake news" by the government, which later investigated the incident and arrested seven suspects.

English-speakers account for nearly a fifth of Cameroon's population of 24 million, who are majority French-speaking.

Years of grievances at perceived discrimination snowballed into a declaration of independence in October 2017, to which the government responded with a crackdown.

The declaration of independence has not been recognised internationally, although the government has lately responded to the crisis by decentralising some of its powers.

Friday's killings followed elections on February 9 that were marred by violence in the regions blamed both on separatists and security forces.

The UN refugee agency said Thursday that almost 8,000 people had fled into Nigeria from Cameroon in the previous two weeks to escape the fighting, bringing the number of refugees to almost 60,000.