Four Cameroonian soldiers who shot women, children dead on camera arrested
Four soldiers suspected to have shot two women and two children dead on camera in Cameroon’s far north have been arrested.
A video of the incident provoked international outcry after it went viral on Twitter.
The graphic footage showed two women, one with an infant strapped to her back, being led across a patch of dusty scrub land by a group of uniformed men, who accused them of belonging to the Nigerian militant group, Boko Haram.
The women, silent throughout the ordeal, were blindfolded and told to sit down alongside their children.
Moments later, two men stepped back, levelled their rifles and fired series of shots.
Amnesty International had said it gathered credible evidence that the men in the video were indeed Cameroonian soldiers based on an analysis of their weapons, speech and uniforms.
Government spokesman Issa Tchiroma Bakary initially described the footage as “fake news” and said that the men in the footage, who were wearing military fatigues, did not appear to be Cameroonian soldiers.
However, he said the government would open an investigation.
“Four soldiers were arrested on Sunday. They are suspected of being the authors of the executions in the video,” an army officer in Cameroon’s Far North region near the border with Nigeria told Reuters.
A second security source said that three of the soldiers had been transferred to the capital Yaounde whilethe fourth was still being held in Maroua, the capital of the Far North.
