Seventy-nine students abducted by gunmen on Monday, November 5, in a troubled Anglophone region of Cameroon have been freed.
The country’s communication minister, Issa Bakary, made the confirmation in the early hours of Wednesday while speaking with newsmen.
Mr Bakary, however, did not give details of the circumstances under which they were set free.
Their release comes a day after Cameroon’s 85-year-old president, Paul Biya, was sworn in for a seventh term in office.
The kidnapping on Monday was the first mass abduction seen in Cameroon and coincide with an upsurge of political tensions in the majority of the French-speaking country.
The abducted students were enrolled at the Presbyterian Secondary School in Bamenda, capital of Cameroon’s northwest region — one of the two areas where surging Anglophone separatist militancy has been met with a brutal crackdown by authorities.
A six-minute video seen by AFP on Monday, but which could not be confirmed independently, showed 11 boys apparently aged about 15 giving their identity and name of the school in English, adding that they were abducted by the “Amba Boys” — a name for Anglophone separatists.
President Biya, however, promised to pursue policies of decentralisation to address “frustrations and aspirations” in English-speaking regions of the country.
