Security confront the gang on the streets of Yaounde, January 7.
Cameroon Journal, Yaounde – Scores of civilians have been severely injured and many others arrested following a bloody showdown yesterday between public security officers and an armed gang from the Briqueterie neighbourhood in Yaounde. The confrontation took place at the second district police station, located at the Mokolo market in Yaounde.
The confrontation between the mob and police officers unfolded in the early hours of the morning in front of the police station as marketers and commuters were going about their daily activities. The gangsters, armed with clubs, machetes and other crude weapons began throwing stones and sticks at the police building before the officers of public security retaliated with batons, water cannons and gun shots in the air.
The confrontation got deadly when the thugs resorted to looting in a nearby Mokolo market. This prompted reinforcement from the Military High Command for Schools and Training (Camp Yayap), a battalion of gendarmerie officers who arrested the situation by dispersing the crowd and shutting down the market.
We gathered that the incident got its roots few days ago when a woman was harassed and deprived of her belongings in the crime-prone Briqueterie neighbourhood. After she lodged a complaint at the second district police station, an inspector of police went down to the field in the evening of January 5, for investigations but was stabbed by the hoodlums. The police officer later died in the hospital, a source told The Cameroon Journal.
It was against this backdrop that a police squad carried out a raid at the Mokolo market to capture the criminals. But the raid met with stiff resistance and escalated into the bloody confrontation.
At press time, police sources said a number of suspects had been arrested while others who obtained injuries were taken to the Yaounde central hospital.
Talking to reporters after the chaotic situation had been brought under control, the Center regional police boss vowed that all the hoodlums who perpetrated yesterday’s “criminal act will be arrested and sanctioned accordingly.”
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