Six school children kidnapped in Cameroon

Representational picture

Fongo Tongo (Cameroon): Six school children - five boys and one girl - were kidnapped here on Friday while they were helping their parents in farming, according to a local government official.

"The children were kidnapped as they were helping their parents in farming. We have no idea where they are since their abduction. The kidnappers initially asked for a ransom but did not contact the family again when they realized they could not pay," Xinhua quoted a senior government official, Amiya Balise Ndongana, as saying.

This is the first time that students have been kidnapped in the border francophone region, ever since 2017.

"They have attacked this section of the country in the past, so we know that they kidnapped the children. Defence and security forces have launched a thorough search for the children and we hope that they will be rescued safe and alive," the official added.

The separatists have not claimed responsibility for the act. Fongo Tongo is in the francophone Western region in Cameroon and shares a boundary with the troubled anglophone region in the Northwest.

In recent years, students have been regularly kidnapped, and then later released, in the English-speaking regions in Cameroon by radical separatists.

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