Day: July 15, 2021

Cameroonian officials say anglophone rebels are taking a new tack in their fight to break away from the country’s French-speaking-majority. Officials say the separatists have started disguising themselves as military troops to infiltrate villages and launch attacks.

In a video widely circulated on social media platforms, including Facebook and WhatsApp, a group of 10 men armed with AK-94 assault rifles claim they are separatist fighters. The men, in civilian clothing, appear to brandish Cameroonian military uniforms, guns, ammunition and bulletproof vests they say they seized from Cameroon military. The men display a man’s head claiming it is that of a government soldier they killed and beheaded.

Cameroon’s military says the head displayed by the fighters as a trophy is that of one of its troops deployed to Babadjou, a French-speaking commercial town on the border with the English-speaking North-West region.

Awah Fonka, governor of Cameroon’s West region, where Babadjou is located, said more than 20 English-speaking separatists from Pinyin, a town in the North-West region, infiltrated the French-speaking West region Wednesday. He said the fighters attacked government troops and looted Babadjou shops.

Fonka said two government troops were killed by fighters disguised in Cameroonian military uniforms to fool the government troops.

Fonka visited Babadjou on Wednesday. He encouraged civilians who fled into the bush to return home.

Fonka said more government troops have been deployed to Babadjou and neighboring villages to find fighters hiding in the bush or among civilians.

The Cameroonian military warned both separatists and civilians against wearing military uniforms in a statement.

Separatists claim on social media they are in possession of several hundred Cameroonian military uniforms removed from the bodies of government troops they have killed. The fighters said some of the uniforms were seized from military camps they have attacked in the English-speaking western regions.

The military acknowledges that the fighters seized uniforms and military weapons from government troops but says the number of weapons and uniforms seized is low.

Peter Ngumulah, a 38-year-old college teacher, has been living in Babadjou for two years and says he fled fighting between government troops and separatists in the town of Bambili in the North-West region. Ngumulah says the government should increase the number of its troops in Babadjou.

“For heaven’s sake, how can just two soldiers be at the border [post between the West and North-West regions], knowing the sophisticated weapons the separatist fighters now possess?” he said. “Everything is going out of hand, and I pray the international community will step in and force both parties to sit at a roundtable for an unconditional dialogue.”

Fonka said five troops were at the military control post at Babadjou when the fighters attacked. Three troops escaped, with one suffering injuries from the shooting. The military said he is responding to treatment in a hospital.

This is not the first time English-speaking separatists have infiltrated the French-speaking region. The fighters attacked the French-speaking village of Galim three times this year and killed at least seven government troops. The military said the rebels stole weapons and deployed additional forces to kill or arrest the fighters.

Cameroon’s separatists have been fighting since 2017 to create an independent English-speaking state in the majority French-speaking country’s western regions.

The conflict has cost more than 3,000 lives and forced 550,000 people to flee to French-speaking regions of Cameroon or into neighboring Nigeria, according to the United Nations.

Source: Voice of America

The World Health Organization has warned that COVID-19 is gaining ground in Africa, with the death toll jumping 43% in the past week. WHO says the continent recorded 1 million new cases in just one month, with several countries facing shortages of oxygen and beds for patients.

Speaking during a virtual press briefing Thursday, Matshidiso Moeti, WHO regional director, said Africa is recording its highest number of COVID-19 cases since the virus hit the continent in early 2020.

“Over the past month, Africa recorded an additional 1 million cases,” Moeti said. “This is the shortest time it has taken so far to add one1 million cases. Comparatively, it took around three months to move from 4 million to 5 million cases. This COVID-19 resurgence is the fastest the continent has seen.”

The global health agency says 12 African countries are experiencing an upward trend of coronavirus, including Algeria, Malawi, Senegal and Zimbabwe.

Moeti says the number of Africans losing lives to the virus is high.

“As this surge sweeps across Africa, we are witnessing a brutal cost, and life-lost deaths have climbed steeply for the past five weeks, jumping 40 percent in the past week,” Moeti said. “This is a clear warning our hospitals are at a breaking point. In all, 153,000 people have sadly died. Africa is just 1 percent shy of the peak in fatalities reached in January.”

The increase in deaths is partly blamed on the delta coronavirus variant that medical experts say is the most transmittable of all the variants. It has been reported in 21 African countries.

Namibia is one African country where the total number of COVID-19 positives is on the decline. However, more than 1,000 people have died there from COVID-19 in the last month.

Ismail Katjitae is a physician at the Ministry of Health and Social Services in Namibia. He explains why the death rate is so high.

“A high prevalence of comorbidities in some communities, limited capacity in some districts and regions to manage severe and critical cases,” Katjitae said. “And a strong misinformation lobby resulting in noncompliance with public health measures, underutilizing available health care services, and delayed complicated presentation in our health facilities.”

So far, only 18 million people out of the 1.3 billion living in Africa have been vaccinated. Some African countries blame the slow vaccination process on the shortage of vaccine doses in the global market.

Catherine Kyobutungi is the head of the African Population and Health Research Center. She says African governments should ask their citizens to follow health protocols like washing hands and wearing masks to limit the spread of the virus.

“Other than the usual measures, Africa does not have too many options without really having much of its population vaccinated,” Kyobutungi said. “So, the hope is that in the next month around August, many countries will receive at least substantial doses of the Johnson and Johnson vaccine, but before then, keeping in place the usual measures.”

Most African countries have eased health measures meant to combat the spread of the virus for economic reasons, and failure to follow those measures is blamed for the spread.

Some African countries expect to get hundreds of thousands of vaccines in the coming weeks as the Aspen pharmaceutical company in South Africa begins producing 400 million vaccines.

Source: Voice of America