Nineteen athletes were being treated for blast injuries on Saturday after multiple small explosions during a running race in part of western Cameroon where English-speaking separatists are fighting government forces, a local doctor said.

There was no immediate comment from authorities in the town of Buea in South-West Region, where 529 athletes were running up the highest mountain in West and Central Africa as they competed in the Mount Cameroon Race of Hope.

The armed wing of Ambazonia Governing Council, one of the separatist militia groups, claimed responsibility for the blasts.

“Our primary target was the Cameroon elite forces … that were providing security for the athletes. We will not allow Cameroon to continue its occupation,” the group’s spokesperson Capo Daniel told Reuters.

A video shared widely on social media that Reuters was not immediately able to verify showed spectators cheering on a runner before dashing for cover when a small explosion goes off in the distance. Another video showed a different explosion going off near a pack of runners elsewhere on the route.

“Nineteen athletes have been brought to our facility with injuries. We have operated upon three of them. Their condition is stable and we haven’t recorded any deaths,” Martin Mokake, the director of Buea Regional Hospital, told Reuters by phone.

One of those being treated was a Gabonese citizen, he said.

Participants in the race included athletes from East, Central and Northern Africa and France.

The separatist insurgency began in Cameroon’s English-speaking North-West and South-West regions in 2016 when teachers and lawyers protested against their perceived marginalisation by the primarily French-speaking national government.

A violent crackdown by security forces helped radicalise the movement, and the ensuing conflict has killed more than 3,000 people and displaced nearly 1 million.

Source: Reuters

The Vice President of the Ambazonia Interim Government says the French Cameroun regime is doomed to collapse, and the support coming from its backers in France will not change the regime’s inevitable fate in Southern Cameroons.

Comrade Dabney Yerima made the remarks in a conversation with Cameroon Concord News on Wednesday, a day after the Francophone dominated Cameroon government military announced that its soldiers deployed to Southern Cameroons have killed dozens of Amba fighters in the North West Region. Yerima warned that the occupying French Cameroun regime is some few months away from falling apart in the Federal Republic of Ambazonia.

Dabney Yerima also warned Southern Cameroonians participating in the French Cameroun teleguided senatorial elections of severe consequences and that the Biya French Cameroun regime is not worth their investment.

The Southern Cameroons exiled leader said that even though France, as Yaounde’s main strategic ally, can continue supporting Biya and his criminal gangs and pressuring pro Yaoundé English speaking Cameroonians to accept the present status quo, the decline and ultimate collapse of the Biya Francophone Beti Ewondo regime cannot be prevented.

Yerima further slammed the French Cameroun regime for pulling out of the Canada peace talks and its continued military operations in Southern Cameroons.

By Nelly Epupa with additional reporting from Chi Prudence Asong

Cameroon’s military says it has killed scores of armed separatists in clashes this month and at least 15 have surrendered. The rebels, who vowed to disrupt March senate elections in Cameroon’s western regions, claim to have killed scores of government troops.

Ndop district residents in Cameroon’s restive Northwest region say seven bodies were found in bushes Tuesday morning, following heavy fighting between separatist rebels and government troops.

Ndop businessman Anyam Edison Penn said the clashes halted trade in Ngoketunjia, where Ndop is located. He spoke to VOA from Ndop via a messaging app.

“For the past weeks fighting in Ngoketunjia has been very very intensive between the separatists and the defense forces, and this has been affecting so many lives, so many persons killed and it has been a burden on our side,” Penn said. “Thousands of people were like they were in a cage. I pray and hope that the crisis will be resolved so that we, the civilians, should not be suffering like this.”

Cameroon’s Anglophone separatists have vowed to disrupt the March 12 elections for Senate and last month killed two election officials.

Cameroon’s government said at least 15 rebel fighters were killed in ongoing clashes this month around Ndop while the military said it killed at least 30 rebels in other northwestern towns.

Cameroon’s highest-ranking official in the area, Handerson Quetong Kongeh, said military raids Monday night targeted at least five separatist camps.

Cameroon’s military acknowledged it took casualties in the fighting but would not give any figures and has not responded to requests for comment.

Despite the threats and ongoing clashes, Cameroon officials say election preparations will continue.

The military said about 15 rebels surrendered. The separatist conflict broke out in 2016 when Anglophone Cameroonians protested discrimination by the Francophone majority.

Cameroon’s military responded with a crackdown and rebels took up arms with the aim of carving out an independent state they call Ambazonia.

The U.N. says fighting has since killed at least 3,500 people and displaced 750,000.

Canada, which is attempting to negotiate an end to the conflict, says more than 6,000 people have been killed and the unrest has deprived 600,000 children of education.

Source: VOA

Nobody in Yaoundé knows for how long he has been connected to Etoudi. However, the expansion of the Anecdote Press Group with the creation of a private television channel Vision 4, Vision Finance Bank, a higher education institute, the establishment of a media house in Paris, France and in the Central African Republic made Jean Pierre Amougou Belinga within a very short period of time one of the most prominent businessmen in Sub Saharan Africa.

The so-called Francophone media guru and business tycoon is also in the news because of his extravagant lifestyle…

Everything changed in Amougou Belinga’s life and things took a dramatic u-turn after January 17, 2023, the date of the kidnapping and brutal murder of Martinez Zogo, a French Cameroun whistleblower journalist who was particularly angry at Jean Pierre Amougou Belinga, whom he presented as an embezzler of public funds.

On the trail of Martinez Zogo’s alleged killers and sponsors, investigators in Yaoundé arrested the CEO of Vision 4 on Monday, February 6, 2023.

The 58 year old Jean Pierre Amougou Belinga has been in police drag-net now for two weeks and for the first time in his life, he celebrated his birthday on February 20 in a cell at the Secretariat of State for Defense in Yaoundé.

The media world is now waiting to see the end of Jean Pierre Amougou Belinga. We of the Cameroon Concord News Group think that one of Etoudi’s powerful men has had a Humpty Dumpty great fall and he will never be back in form.

Mr. Amougou Belinga reportedly has some friends and enemies deep within the Biya Francophone Beti Ewondo regime in Yaoundé.

Prominent on the list of friends is General Ivo Desancio Yenwo, the Director of Presidential Security who intelligence sources have revealed helped in making Amougou Belinga a billionaire.

His business empire has also received patronage from Justice Minister Laurent Esso, a senior Biya acolyte.

In the register of enemies of the CEO of the press group l’Anecdote, is the Minister-Secretary General at the presidency of the Republic Ferdinand Ngoh Ngoh, Galax Yves Landry Etoga, head of the national gendarmerie and Martin Mbarga Nguele, General Delegate for National Security.

By Nelly Epupa with files from Staff Lady Rita Akana

Interest in the Martinez Zogo murder case will not be dying down anytime soon despite some delays due to lack of evidence against the country’s justice minister, Laurent Esso, linking him to the murder.

After hearing the defendants and examining the reports of the commission of inquiry, the government commissioner this week felt that there was not enough evidence to send Jean Pierre Amougou Belinga and other co-accused to the Yaoundé Maximum Security Prison known as Kondengui.

On Tuesday, February 14, 2023, the Yaoundé military court spent about ten hours to question about thirty people arrested in connection with the kidnapping of the whistleblower and journalist, Martinez Zogo, following his barbaric murder on January 17, 2023.

In order for justice to be served, the country’s president, Paul Biya, set up a commission of inquiry comprising police and gendarme officers which has arrested and interviewed for nearly three weeks, about thirty suspects at the Secretariat of State for Defense (SED).

Transferred to the military court for the first time in the early afternoon of Tuesday, February 14, the defendants were on their way to Kondengui when the government commissioner decided to send them back to the SED.

“We had already made arrangements to receive them at Kondengui (the Yaoundé neighborhood which houses the central and secondary prisons). But we also knew that the military prosecutor could decide to release them or ask that they be returned to the SED for further investigation. He chose the latter option because the reports indicate that there is something missing to place the defendants under arrest. This case is very complicated, with pressure coming from all sides,” commented a source close to the case.

To date, the influential businessman, Jean Pierre Amougou Belinga, CEO of the media group, Anecdote, and alleged mastermind of the murder of Martinez Zogo, is spending his second week in custody at the SED.

On the other hand, some of his close collaborators, including Mr. Boulemou, Melanie Bibanga, Rose Olgane, and Ines Belinga were released on Monday, February 13, 2023 for undisclosed reasons.

Ivana Essomba, the wife of Bruno Bidjang, the General Manager of the Anecdote Group, is also breathing the air of freedom. They all spent four days at the SED.

 During their brief stay at the SED, they were interviewed in relation to the Martinez Zogo murder case.

During the various hearings, Colonel Raymond Etoundi Nsoe, head of security and father-in-law of Jean Pierre Amougou Belinga had, according to Equinoxe television, confirmed the statement made against the Vision 4 CEO by Lieutenant Colonel Justin Danwe, the Director of Operations at the Directorate General of External Research (DGRE).

 Cameroon Concord News learned that Colonel Raymond Etoundi Nsoe had confessed that the money wired into his account by Amougou Belinga was intended to pay off those who murdered   Martinez Zogo.

This testimony underscores that the media mogul played a key role in Mr. Zogo’s murder. But the latter has denied his involvement in this heinous crime since his arrest.

The tragic-comedy is still playing out and the public is growing very impatient with the manner in which the investigation is progressing.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

Women in Ekona, a town in Muyuka sub-division of the South-west Region, mobilized themselves and protested at the Legion office in Buea, on February 15, 2023.

An unspecified number of women from Ekona, carrying peace plants, gathered in front of the legion office in Buea and requested for the release of their children who were arrested in Ekona on Sunday, February 12, 2023.

According to sources in Ekona, the youths were in a football field as there was an ongoing football match, when the military stormed the area and carried out a mass arrest. The following day, February 13, more arrests were made by the military.

Talking to another protester, she said that, the military made it a norm to arrest their sons and brothers for no reason and termed them separatist fighters.

After spending hours in front of the legion office and putting movement of vehicles on hold, the women decided to leave after they were told that their sons would be released and sent back home.

Residents of Ekona, especially young men have witnessed several assaults from both the military and the separatist fighters, since the start of the ongoing crisis and are yet to recover from the damages caused by the conflict.

By Cecilia Manjang

Justice Minister Laurent Esso, who had led several concocted high-profile CPDM government investigations into corruption, is now en route to jail for life for participating in the murder of journalist Martinez Zogo.

Laurent Esso has been in the business of killing for decades and he is expected to be auditioned by state prosecutors at the Yaoundé Military Court following a decision by the 90-year-old President Biya.

Esso has been in the Biya government ever since the 90-year-old dictator came to power in 1982 and has led many high-profile investigations and crackdowns including a probe into the famous Albatross affair.

Recently, investigators admitted that Laurent Esso has a special relationship with business tycoon Amougou Belinga and that he reportedly participated in the killing of journalist Martinez Zogo.

Ahead of Amougou Belinga’s arrest in the nation’s capital Yaoundé, investigators also established that Laurent Esso had also been part of the criminal gang of the Francophone mafia boss and shared a telephone conversation with Belinga minutes before journalist Martinez Zogo was murdered.

Justice Minister Laurent Esso is also being accused of covering several cases of murder brought against Amougou Belinga.

The influence of Esso, who is yet to receive his summon within the ruling CPDM party has been described by top Biya aides as a cancer that should to be eliminated.

On Tuesday, Amougou Belinga and his gang were ferried in very old National Gendarmerie Toyota pickups to the Yaoundé Military Court in a move described by many political commentators in Yaoundé as the end of the preliminary investigation into the journalist Martinez Zogo affair.

Like Laurent Esso, they all have been accused of being part of the clique that killed journalist Martinez Zogo.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

Cameroon’s President, Paul Biya, will surely be dying next year based on what he said on June 9, 2004, following an announcement that he had died in 2004.

Many Cameroonians have been looking forward to Mr. Biya’s death but they may have to wait for one year again as Mr. Biya is not in a rush to leave this planet.

On Monday, Mr. Biya celebrated his 90th birthday and he is in good shape. If anybody is expecting the 90-year-old Biya to die this year, then he might be hoping against hope.

Biya has repeatedly defended his record in the past and says that the government has made strides to return peace to the minority English-speaking regions where separatists are trying to form their own state.

He touts his Vision 2035 plan as a blueprint to boost development over the next 12 years.

Biya was born in Mvomeka’a, a village in the southern equatorial forest, in 1933, the year prohibition ended in the United States and Adolf Hitler became Chancellor in Germany.

After studying in Paris, he returned to Cameroon in 1962 as a top civil servant and quickly rose to become the Prime Minister in 1975. He was hand-picked as successor after the country’s first post-independence president Ahmadou Ahidjdo decided to resign suddenly in November 1982.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai