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The restive Cameroon regions. MAP | NATION MEDIA GROUP
A Kenyan Roman Catholic priest has been killed in the restive
Southwest Cameroon where government troops are battling armed
separatists, sources said Thursday.
Father Cosmas
Omboto Ondari, a Mill Hill priest serving in the Diocese of Mamfe, was
killed on Wednesday, local media reported without giving details of the
circumstances surrounding his demise.
Fr Ondari was
ordained in Kisii, south-west of Nairobi in March last year, together
with two others and appointed to the Diocese of Mamfe, according to the
St Joseph Missionary Society.
Men of God
Bishop
Andrew Fuanya Nkea of the Diocese of Mamfe was not reachable for
comments Thursday, but a close aid to the clergyman said he was
preparing a press release to that effect.
The death of
the Kenyan clergy has increased the number of men of God killed in the
midst of the two-year long escalating conflict that has gripped the two
English-speaking regions of Cameroon.
Last October, a US Baptist Missionary Charles Truman Wesco was killed in the Northwestern town of Bambui near Bamenda.
A Roman Catholic priest, Fr Alexander Nougi Sob, was also killed in the Southwestern town of Muyuka in July.
Security forces
The
crisis in the English-speaking Cameroon started as an industrial strike
by lawyers and teachers in 2016, but snowballed into an internal armed
conflict since last year when separatists joined and symbolically
declared the independence of the Federal Republic of Ambazonia.
At
least 400 “ordinary people” and more than 175 members of the security
forces have been killed, according to statistics by local and
international groups that have been documenting abuses in the escalating
violence, including Amnesty International.
More than
300,000 people have fled the violence, many of them now living from
hand-to-mouth and exposed to varied dangers in the forests, and some
across the border into Nigeria.
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