At least 11 plantation workers were seriously injured and four others abducted Monday night by Ambazonia Restoration Forces in Tiko, a locality in the Fako County in Southern Cameroons.

Four of the injured workers on a rubber plantation of state-owned Cameroon Development Corporation (CDC) were rushed to the hospital early Tuesday with life-threatening wounds.

“They (armed separatists) arrived when the workers were about to sleep and assembled them in the yard and started flogging one after another with machetes. They chopped off the fingers and hands of some of them. And then abducted four men and left for the bush.” Lygonga Mbonde, one of the unit managers of CDC told reporters.

The Southern Cameroons Interim Government recently vowed on the Ambazonia National Television channel, SCBC to make the territory ungovernable. They consider CDC a legitimate target, according to security reports.

The CDC runs banana, palm oil, and rubber plantations in Southern Cameroons. In August last year, the agro-industry said, more than 6,000 of its 20,000 workers had fled sporadic attacks, killings and kidnapping from Ambazonia Restoration Forces.

The English-speaking region now known as the Federal Republic of Ambazonia has been hit by an uprising since 2017.

A so-called national dialogue to end the conflict was held in the French Cameroun capital of Yaounde in early October and recommended that a special status should be granted to the British Southern Cameroons territory.

Reported by Xinhaunet with additional editing from Cameroon Concord News