Armed group seizes weapons from Cameroon security outpost

YAOUNDE (AFP) — An armed group attacked a security outpost in Cameroon's southwest Bakassi peninsula and made off with weapons although no one was killed in the raid, sources said.

The unidentified group, which was "heavily armed and came in a pirogue" attacked the brigade of security forces in the early hours of Monday, a well-informed source close to security services said on condition of anonymity.

"All of the brigade's weapons were taken away" by the attackers as the officers manning the outpost fled, the source said, specifying that 12 weapons had been seized.

An administrative official in the region confirmed the attack and said that "the attackers were taken by surprise and were outnumbered."

Several groups, mostly armed, are active in the swampy, resource-rich Bakassi peninsula, which was handed over to Cameroon by Nigeria in August 2008 under an international court settlement of a border dispute.

Elite Cameroonian troops patrol the peninsula, but hostage-taking is nevertheless not unknown.

Seven Chinese fishermen were seized off the coast of the peninsula by an armed group who held them for five days before Cameroonian forces were able to free them on March 17, according to the president's office.

Comments

[Chief, Ayuk Arrey.]

If the seize weapons will be use to overthrow Biya in 2011, I find nothing wrong in it.

[njimaforboy]

Someone is thinking in this forum. That is what we mean by critical thinking skills.

[Peppersoup]

Why seize the weapons? Employ those criminal armed groups to do the housecleaning! and they'd use their experience and manpower! Only thing is, they will never leave after that.

For now, you mustn't dream they will ever cease coming back for more booty... wild dogs don't when they know there'll always be weapons and booty on the eastern reaches of the Bakassi Peninsula. or oil money!

Until some other more organized gang flushes them out they will always come back to whet their tongues.

States are no longer what they used to be. Biya must have realized that.