Bodies of presumed kidnapping victims found in Cameroon
YAOUNDE (AFP) — The bodies of five presumed kidnapping victims missing since Monday in the Cameroonian region of Bakassi were found riddled with bullets in a mangrove swamp, officials said on Saturday.
"The bodies are in such a state of decomposition that we have to wait for doctors to identify them," a representative from the Ministry for Defence told AFP, adding that autopsy results are expected Tuesday.
The sixth person missing out of the group -- which included Cameroonian soldiers and a deputy regional governor -- is presumed to also have been killed, authorities said.
"There is almost no doubt that the kidnapped subprefect is among them and that the sixth person whose body has not been found is also deceased," said the official.
The five mutilated bodies were found by the Cameroonian army Friday night buried among mangroves, the Defence Ministry said in a statement.
The deputy governor of Kombo Abedimo, Fonya Felix Morfaw [name corrected---Ed.Ndungated webmaster], and five soldiers were attacked and kidnapped June 9 on a boat travelling on the Akwa Yafe River in Bakassi, which borders with Nigeria.
The Cameroonian army's chief of staff on Tuesday interrogated heavily armed "pirates" who had opened fire on the vessel carrying the deputy governor and the soldiers, said the representative.
Three soldiers, one of whom was seriously injured, managed to escape in the attack by diving into the water.
On November 21 last year, Cameroonian soldiers were killed on the Bakassi peninsula, which juts into the Gulf of Guinea, in an attack by unidentified armed men.
Nigeria officially handed the peninsula to Cameroon in August 2006 after a territorial dispute that led to a series of bloody clashes between the west African neighbours in the 1990s.
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