DOUALA (Reuters) – A small homemade bomb exploded in Cameroon’s capital on Thursday, wounding two people, a senior official told Reuters, the third minor explosion of its kind in Yaounde in recent weeks.
It was not immediately clear who was behind the attack, which was also reported on state television. Government forces have been fighting Anglophone rebels in western Cameroon since 2016, but the conflict is more than 200 km (120 miles) from the capital.
“It’s a homemade bomb like the two that exploded recently,” Yaounde’s administrative officer Jean Claude Tsila said by phone, declining to respond directly when asked who the authorities believed had made the explosives.
“You know in which part of Cameroon they make homemade bombs,” he said.
The police and ministry of territorial administration could not immediately be reached for comment.
Some residents of northwest and southwest regions have called for a split from the country for decades, but fighting with rebels has escalated since 2017 as support for secession grows and armed groups appear.
The fighting, often in remote villages surrounded by cocoa farms and forests, has been one of the greatest threats to President Paul Biya’s government during his nearly 40 years in power.
(Reporting by Josiane Kouagheu; Writing by Alessandra Prentice; Editing by Daniel Wallis)
