A police officer has been killed and five teachers kidnapped after armed men attacked a teacher training centre in Wum, Cameroon, authorities said on Wednesday.
The attack reportedly occurred on Tuesday morning at a teacher training centre in Wum, located about 80 kilometres north of Bamenda, the capital of the country’s Northwest Region.
According to AFP, the armed men infiltrated the facility before abducting the teachers.
The Northwest Governor, Adolphe Lele Lafrique, said in a statement that a police officer who attempted to intervene was shot dead by the attackers.
“The armed individuals unleashed a hail of bullets on him, killing him instantly, and took five teachers with them to an unknown location,” the governor said.
He added that security forces had launched a search for the attackers and were working to locate the abducted teachers.
The incident is the latest in a series of attacks in Cameroon’s two English-speaking regions, where a separatist conflict has persisted for nearly a decade.
The crisis began in late 2016 after the government cracked down on protests by teachers and lawyers in the English-speaking regions.
The protesters had accused the predominantly French-speaking government of increasing its control over the education and legal systems in the anglophone areas.
The crackdown later escalated into an armed conflict in 2017 between separatist groups and government forces based in Yaoundé.
Since then, civilians have been caught up in the violence, with cases of killings, kidnappings for ransom, extortion and attacks on communities reported across the affected regions.
The United Nations estimates that at least 6,000 people have been killed since the conflict began in 2016.
The violence has also triggered a major displacement crisis, with more than 330,000 people internally displaced in Cameroon in 2025, while over 100,000 others reportedly fled across the border into neighbouring Nigeria.
