Four people were murdered in clashes between security personnel and followers of an opposition leader in Cameroon who claims to have won recent presidential elections, authorities reported ahead of the official results announcement on Monday.
Issa Tchiroma, who challenged President Paul Biya’s 43-year hold on power on the October 12 ballot, had asked his followers to march peacefully on the eve of the announcement, despite a restriction on public meetings.
Tchiroma claims he received 54.8 percent of the vote, but most observers believe the 92-year-old Biya will win an eighth term in a system that his critics claim is increasingly corrupted.
The regional governor of Cameroon’s largest city, Douala, claimed demonstrators “attacked” a gendarmerie brigade and police stations in two districts on Sunday.
“Four people unfortunately lost their lives,” said Samuel Dieudonne Ivaha Diboua, adding that several members of the security forces were also injured.
Protesters at the scene showed AFP journalists bullet casings that they claimed they recovered after security officers fired shots near the gendarmerie.
The shooting with “live ammunition” began after a burst of tear gas, according to a demonstrator who spoke to AFP on condition of anonymity.
“They fired, three people, three bodies fell in front of us,” he told me.
The Constitutional Council is scheduled to reveal the final election results at 11:00 a.m. (1000 GMT) on Monday in the capital, Yaounde.
Earlier on Sunday, police used tear gas to disperse hundreds of demonstrators in Tchiroma’s northern bastion of Garoua, where protestors held Cameroonian flags and banners reading “Tchiroma 2025” and sang “Goodbye Paul Biya, Tchiroma is coming”.
For many days, scores of followers of the Cameroon opposition leader have gathered outside the opposition leader’s home, where he claimed in a video Sunday that military personnel attempted to take him away.
In Yaounde, despite a substantial police presence, the call to protest did not appear to be carried out.
Prior to the alleged skirmishes in Douala, an AFP journalist spotted several dozen people assemble near the airport, breaching the department’s prefect’s demonstration restriction.
Two opposition figures in Cameroon from a coalition that supported Tchiroma as a candidate were arrested in their Douala homes on Friday, according to the group.
They are Djeukam Tchameni, President of the Cameroonian Movement for Democracy and Interdependence, and Anicet Ekane, President of the African Movement for Cameroon’s New Independence.
Significant internet service problems have also been observed in recent days, which, according to NetBlocks, “may limit coverage of events on the ground”.
On Saturday, Minister of Territorial Administration Paul Atanga Nji stated that the protests “create the conditions for a security crisis” and contribute to “the implementation of an insurrectionist project”.
