YAOUNDE, Cameroon (AP) — Armed separatists kidnapped at least 79 students and three staff members from a Presbyterian school in a troubled English-speaking region of Cameroon, the governor said Monday. North West Region Governor Deben Tchoffo said the students abducted Sunday night were ages 11-17, and they were taken from Nkwen, a village near the regional capital, Bamenda, along with school staff that included the principal. “We have asked our military to do everything and bring back the kids alive.”

A video purporting to show the kidnapped students was posted on social media from a group of men who call themselves “Amba boys,” a reference to the state of Ambazonia that armed separatists want to establish in Cameroon’s Anglophone North West and South West regions. The men who identify themselves on the video as the kidnappers say they will only release the children when they achieve what they want. The children say they were kidnapped late Sunday by the armed men and they don't know where they are being held. While the video could not be independently verified, parents have been reacting on social media saying they recognise their children in the video. Hundreds have been killed in Cameroon’s English-speaking regions in the past year, where violence between armed separatists and the military have increased since a government crackdown against protesters in the northwest and southwest regions who claim that as the English-speaking minority they are marginalised by the French-speaking government. “The abduction of schoolchildren and teachers can never be justified.”

Amnesty International expressed solidarity with the students’ families and demanded “that the Cameroon authorities do everything in their power to ensure all the pupils and school staff are freed unharmed.”

Last week, separatist militants attacked workers on a state-run rubber plantation in southwestern Cameroon, allegedly chopping off their fingers because the men defied an order to stay away from the farms.
A kidnapping occurs at a school in Bamenda, the capital of the North-West region of Cameroon, with at least seventy-eight students and three staff taken, including the principal. The Anglophone Crisis is a conflict between separatists and the government of Cameroon.