Twelve European tourists have been freed after being taken hostage in western Cameroon, where anglophone militants are campaigning for an independent state, the government said on Wednesday.
The group of seven Swiss and five Italians "were taken hostage by a band of armed terrorists" in the Southwest Region before being rescued by troops on Monday in a "special operation," the communications ministry said in a statement.
Separately, six municipal councillors in the neighbouring Northwest Region - another seat of anglophone unrest - were also released in operations that saw "tens of assailants neutralised, huge stocks of weapons and ammunitions as well as large quantities of drug(s) seized," it said.
Cameroon's government is fighting insurgents demanding a separate state for the two regions.
They are home to most of the country's anglophones, who account for about a fifth of the predominantly French-speaking population.
The tourists, members of an organisation called the African Adventure Group, were seized in the area of Moungo-Ndor while they were heading for a tourist site called the Twin Lakes, the ministry said.
The lakes, lying in volcanic craters, have special significance in the local traditional religion and are deemed to represent the male and female genders.
The statement did not say when the group, or the municipal councillors in the Northwest Region, had gone missing.
One of the main armed separatist groups, the Ambazonia Defence Forces (ADF), played no part in the tourists' abduction, its leader Cho Ayaba told AFP.
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Two other foreigners, a pair of Tunisian engineers, were abducted in the troubled region on March 15.
One of them died during an army rescue operation on March 20 - "killed by his abductors," according to the military's account, which said "four terrorists died in the operation".
The anglophone question in Cameroon dates back to Africa's colonial period.
France and Britain divided up the former German colony under League of Nations mandates after World War I.
A year after the French-ruled territory became independent in 1961, the southern part of British Cameroons was integrated into a federal system, scrapped 11 years later for a "united republic".
In recent years, agitation has risen among anglophones, chafing under the perception that they suffer prejudice at the hands of the francophone majority, especially in the judicial system and education.
But demands for a return to the federal structure were rejected by the government.
In a spiral of radicalisation, the breakaway movement issued a symbolic declaration of independence for "Ambazonia," their name for the putative state, on October 1.
President Paul Biya met the revolt with a crackdown, including curfews, raids and restrictions on travel.
Unrest has increased in recent weeks, with attacks on security forces and civilians as well as a spate of kidnappings of officials, and new groups are spawning within the separatist movement.
The clashes have prompted around 33,000 people to flee to neighbouring Nigeria.
The latest violence comes on the heels of visits to the Northwest and Southwest regions last month by Cameroon's newly-appointed interior minister, Paul Atanga Nji, himself an anglophone.
He said he brought "a message of dialogue, a responsible dialogue, a dialogue with those who know that Cameroon is one and indivisible".
Sole survivors
- Cecelia Crocker was on board Northwest Airlines Flight 255 in 1987 when it crashed in Detroit, killing 154 people, including her parents and brother. The plane had hit a light pole on take off
- George Lamson Jr, from Minnesota, was on a Galaxy Airlines flight that crashed in Reno in 1985, killing 68 people. His entire seat was launched out of the plane
- Bahia Bakari, then 12, survived when a Yemenia Airways flight crashed near the Comoros in 2009, killing 152. She was found clinging to wreckage after floating in the ocean for 13 hours.
- Jim Polehinke was the co-pilot and sole survivor of a 2006 Comair flight that crashed in Lexington, Kentucky, killing 49.
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Founders: Mounir Nakhla, Ahmed Mohsen and Mohamed Aboulnaga
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4,872 matches
1,942 teams
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76 nations
26 UAE teams
15 Lebanese teams
2 Kuwaiti teams
Our legal columnist
Name: Yousef Al Bahar
Advocate at Al Bahar & Associate Advocates and Legal Consultants, established in 1994
Marital status: Single
Education: Mr Al Bahar was born in 1979 and graduated in 2008 from the Judicial Institute. He took after his father, who was one of the first Emirati lawyers
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UAE squad
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Thursday, November 7 – UAE v Oman
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Favourite Quote: “Real victories are those that protect human life, not those that result from its destruction emerge from its ashes,” by The late king Hussain of Jordan.
Favourite Hobby: Writing and cooking
Favourite Book: The Prophet by Gibran Khalil Gibran
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LIKELY TEAMS
South Africa
Faf du Plessis (captain), Dean Elgar, Aiden Markram, Hashim Amla, AB de Villiers, Quinton de Kock (wkt), Vernon Philander, Keshav Maharaj, Kagiso Rabada, Morne Morkel, Lungi Ngidi.
India (from)
Virat Kohli (captain), Murali Vijay, Lokesh Rahul, Cheteshwar Pujara, Rohit Sharma, Ajinkya Rahane, Hardik Pandya, Dinesh Karthik (wkt), Ravichandran Ashwin, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Ishant Sharma, Mohammad Shami, Jasprit Bumrah.
MATCH INFO
Jersey 147 (20 overs)
UAE 112 (19.2 overs)
Jersey win by 35 runs
The specs: 2018 BMW R nineT Scrambler
Price, base / as tested Dh57,000
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