Seven people died in Mamfe during a botched raid by presumed Southern Cameroons militants on a gendarmerie post located at the Egbekaw neighborhood.

The attack, in which a gendarme died and six attackers were killed, targeted a security station in Mamfe, a town in the Southwest region, according to a government official.

“A gendarme was killed and seven others wounded. Among the attackers, six people were shot dead” when the gendarmerie returned fire, he said.

The Biya Francophone regime said the gunmen had tried to flee in a police pickup but the vehicle was stopped at a security checkpoint. The toll has however been denied by eye witnesses. What we now know is that the attack took place just hours before Cameroon’s defense minister went to Buea to oversee a memorial ceremony for two policemen and four soldiers killed by Ambazonian militants in Manyu last month.

Over the past year, there has been mounting tension in Cameroon’s Southwest and Northwest regions — home to Anglophones who account for about a fifth of the West African nation’s population of 22 million.

English-speakers complain they have suffered decades of economic inequality and social injustice at the hands of the French-speaking majority, especially in education and the judiciary. But calls for greater autonomy have been rejected by President Paul Biya whose government has led a crackdown on the separatist drive, imposing night-time curfews, restrictions on movement, raids and body searches.