Biafra League militants kill five Cameroonian soldiers in battle over Bakassi, lose one member

The military wing of the separatist Biafra Nations League (BNL) operating in the Bakassi Peninsula, the Gulf of Guinea, and other waterways of the border communities between Nigeria and Cameroon, Black Marine, at the weekend engaged the military force of Cameroon, the Rapid d’intervention Battalion (BIR), in a gunbattle, killing five Cameroonian soldiers.

The five soldiers attached to the Rapid d’intervention Battalion (BIR) of the Cameroonian military were said to be killed by the Black Marine in a resistant battle to stop the Cameroonian soldiers from invading their camp in          the Peninsula.

Leader of the     Biafra Nations League in Bakassi, Ita Bassey, had admitted the confrontation between the Black Marine force of BNL, and the Cameroonian military at the weekend, saying that the militants acted in self-defense to protect the camp against invasion by the Cameroonian military.

Ita Bassey had narrated that the Cameroonian military arrived the location of the              camp in three gunboats with the intention      of            invading                               the                         camp and carting              away arms           but were not aware the            boys     were in camp.    According to Bassey, before the Cameroonian forces could start shooting on approaching the camp, the boys opened fire on them. “They thought that nobody was in the camp; they wanted to go and take all the arms and ammunition, but met their waterloo, as the boys opened fire on them few kilometers from the camp,” Ita Bassey had highlighted.

The BNL militants, thus, first opened fire on the Cameroonian military, killing five soldiers and also suffered casualty as one of them was killed.

Local source had disclosed that the Rapid d’intervention Battalion (BIR) personnel had pulled down two wooden poles being hung with Biafran flags at about 2 kilometers far away from the militants’ camp in Isangele at about 9.00am Saturday morning, and thereafter, started advancing towards the camp when they met swift resistance from the militants.

The locals had also disclosed sighting two military drone cameras hovering around the border communities on Friday evening before the incursion of the Cameroonian forces on Saturday morning, which was eventually resisted by the militants.

The national leadership of the Biafra Nations League and the Black Marine are yet to make an official statement on the weekend confrontation.