According to the defence ministry, a crowd lynched a military police officer after he killed a five-year-old child when he opened fire on a car at a checkpoint in the capital of Cameroon’s English-speaking South West Region on Thursday.
Protests erupted in Buea after the girl’s murder, with people carrying her body to the regional governor’s office.
In town, there was also sporadic gunfire, though it was unclear who was firing.
Secessionist fighters, enraged by the French-speaking majority’s perceived marginalization, have been fighting government soldiers in two English-speaking regions for nearly five years in a bid to construct Ambazonia, a breakaway state.
Over 3,000 people have been killed and nearly a million displaced, with both sides accused of committing atrocities.
The ministry said in a statement that the vehicle’s driver initially refused to stop at a gendarmerie checkpoint and then tried to pull away from the officers who had managed to force him to a halt.
“In an inappropriate reaction, unsuited to the circumstances and clearly disproportionate to the irreverent behavior of the driver, one of the gendarmes … fired warning shots in order to immobilize the vehicle,” the statement said.
“In the process, the little Caro Louise Ndialle, a young pupil aged about 5, who was on board the said vehicle, was fatally shot in the head.”
A crowd then set upon the gendarme and killed him, the ministry said, adding that an investigation has been opened into the two deaths.
Hundreds of residents took to the streets of Buea, some holding tree branches in a sign of peace. Others waved 500 franc CFA currency notes ($0.88), which they said was how much the girl’s parents refused to pay before the gendarme opened fire.
Several said the incident was part of a pattern of heavily militarised security forces harassing local residents.
