LIBREVILLE, Jan 12, 2024 (BSS/AFP) - Violence in Cameroon's English-speaking

regions and the Far North increased in the second half of 2023 with civilians
"severely impacted", according to Human Rights Watch (HRW).

Clashes between armed groups and government forces saw an increase in "cases
of unlawful killings, abduction and raids on villages" in the last six months
of the year, the New York-based organisation said in an annual review
released Thursday.

Cameroon's primarily English-speaking Northwest and Southwest regions have
been gripped by conflict since separatists declared independence in 2017.

That followed decades of grievances over perceived discrimination at the
hands of the country's French-speaking majority.

President Paul Biya, 90, who has ruled Cameroon with an iron fist for 41
years, has resisted calls for wider autonomy and responded with a crackdown.

In the Anglophone areas, separatists kept up attacks on schools, students and
education professionals last year as part of a boycott against the teaching
of French.

The report listed at least 2,245 schools that are "not functioning" in the
Anglophone regions.

By mid-2023, more than 638,000 people had been displaced and 1.7 million
needed humanitarian aid in the two regions.

They saw continued violence for a sixth year, HRW noted, "despite President
Paul Biya saying in January that many armed separatist groups had surrendered
and that the threat they posed had been significantly reduced".

"Abusive army raids and killings of civilians may also have been perpetrated
against individuals suspected of being separatists or in retaliation for
attacks against army positions," HRW said.

Since the violence first erupted in 2016 at least 6,000 civilians have been
killed by government and separatist forces, the report said.

The Far North region, plagued since 2009 by militants from Boko Haram and its
rival Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP), saw 246 attacks and the
killing of at least 169 civilians by non-state actors -- mostly Islamist
groups -- last year, HRW said.

Three aid workers with French NGO Premiere Urgence Internationale were
abducted on Wednesday in the Far North where the borders of Nigeria, Chad,
Niger and Cameroon meet.