By Moma Sandrine
During the later hours of Tuesday January 22, the campus of the Presbyterian Comprehensive Secondary School, P.C.S.S Azire in Bamenda was attacked by gunmen referred to as separatist fighters.
According to some students who were present at school that day, they were having lectures when this group of unidentified men appeared from nowhere, pointing guns at them through the window. In panic, most of the students began fleeing the campus. In the course of the commotion, two of the students were shot on their thighs leaving them seriously wounded. One of the students who was shot recounts her story “In the afternoon we were having a history class. Out of a sudden we realized the boys were at our window. Somebody shouted Jesus. I did not really see the boys. The whole class started running, just as I ran passed the door of our class, I was shot and I fell on the ground.”
One other student was abducted on her way back from school alongside her friends. They were later freed after receiving severe beatings from those she described as ambazonian fighters. “When I went to school in the morning, they drove me for fees. When I was coming back, those boys saw me. I was walking with my friend so they made us to climb on their bike and took us to a strange place. They beat us with machetes. They pointed a gun at our faces, threatening to shoot us. They later made me to give my father’s number which they called and he came. They flogged us severely and afterwards we were released” the student narrated. After her terrific ordeal, she was rushed to a hospital for treatment, though she was psychologically traumatized.
The three injured students are said to be in a stable condition. “We received three cases of the crisis, two cases of gunshots aged 12 and one case of assault aged 17. They were brought in at about 2:30pm on the day of the incidence. The one who was shot on the thigh was in a stable condition. The other girl shot on the buttocks had some complications. We discovered her bladder was injured and thus she had to be operated upon. They are all in a stable condition as I can say” the health care worker in charge of the victims narrated.
Since the day of this incidence, the doors of P.C.S.S Azire have remained shut. Efforts to speak to any of the schools authority were futile.
Since the start of the Anglophone crisis in the two English speaking regions of Cameroon, several cases of gunshots and torture have been rushed to medical facilities for urgent attention “As concerns the crises, we have been receiving several cases of gunshots and cases of people being kidnapped and beaten up” a health care worker in Bamenda told The SUN.
Several people have decried the government’s delay in bringing a lasting solution to the crises “how many more children shall we bury before the government solves this problem” a mother lamented. Just few weeks back, a 4 year old died in Bali due to the deafening sounds of gunshots that freaked him out and caused his heart to stop beating.
As days go on, inhabitants of the North West continue to hope and pray for normalcy to return to the land.