Child hostages released by kidnappers in Cameroon
All 78 children who were kidnapped in the northwest of Cameroon on Monday have been released. They were taken from a boarding school in the city of Bamenda, where militias have been demanding secession from the French-speaking part of the country.
School children, who were kidnapped by armed men and released on Wednesday, are helped to get into a truck by gendarmes in Bamenda, Cameroon. (November 7, 2018)
All 78 children and a driver kidnapped in west Cameroon were released on Wednesday, but a principal and one teacher are still being held by the armed men that took them, a priest conducting negotiations said.
The group was abducted in Bamenda, a commercial hub of Cameroon's restive English-speaking region, on Monday.
TRT World's Philip Owira reports.
"Praise God 78 children and the driver have been released. The principal and one teacher are still with the kidnappers. Let us keep praying," Samuel Fonki, a minister of the Presbyterian Church in Cameroon, said.
Cameroon's Minister for Communication, Issa Tchiroma Bakary joins TRT World.
He had earlier put the number of children taken at 79, but later said one of their number was in fact a teacher, who remained with the kidnappers.
Fonki and the Cameroonian military have accused anglophone separatists of carrying out the kidnappings, but a separatist spokesman denied involvement.
Arison Tambu joins TRT World from Yaounde.
In an inauguration speech following last month's election to extend his 36-year rule, President Paul Biya told the separatists to lay down their arms or face the full force of the law, offering no concessions to them.
Anglophone secessionists have imposed curfews and closed schools as part of their protest against Biya's French-speaking government and its perceived marginalisation of the English-speaking minority, although they had never kidnapped children before.
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