Buea, Cameroon – Fresh armed confrontations across the Southern Cameroons last weekend are once again challenging official Cameroon claims that the war in Southern Cameroons-Ambazonia is fading into history. Reports and videos circulating online following attacks on Sunday, May 17, suggest restoration fighters remain very active across several counties despite years of Cameroon military offensives and repeated claims from Yaoundé that stability is returning to the conflict-hit regions.
Weekend’s attack in Muyuka, where Ambazonia restoration fighters, identifying themselves as the “Fako-Meme Unity Warriors” released video footage claiming responsibility for the attack on Cameroonian soldiers. In the footage, the fighters displayed weapons seized during the operation, including several automatic machine guns and what appeared to be an RPG launcher. Video footage reviewed also showed several long chains of ammunition confiscated from government forces.
The fighters reported that three Cameroon soldiers were killed during the confrontation. No official military statement has been released at the time of reporting confirming casualties or losses. However, several Francophone bloggers and pro-government social media accounts circulated images they claimed showed soldiers killed during the Muyuka incident, though the authenticity and exact connection of the images to the attack could not be verified.
The Muyuka confrontation was not isolated. On the same day, another attack was reported in Ndunga-Mantung, where video footage showed Ambazonia fighters displaying two carcasses of Cameroon soldiers, with rifles confiscated from them displayed on their mortal bodies. In Boyo County, they said they seized another AK-47 rifle from a Cameroonian soldier whose fate remains unclear. The incidents appeared to reinforce a pattern that has increasingly characterized the conflict in recent months: hit-and-run attacks targeting military patrols or checkpoints followed by the seizure of weapons and rapid withdrawal into rural terrain.
Taken together, the attacks are reviving difficult questions for the Cameroonian government at a politically delicate time. For months, officials and state-aligned commentators have increasingly projected the image of a conflict nearing its end. Cameroon authorities have pointed to reopened schools, public events, road rehabilitation projects, and reduced visibility of armed groups in some urban areas as evidence that government forces are regaining control.
But the attacks in Muyuka, Ndunga-Mantung and Boyo reveal a more complicated reality. The Ambazonian insurgency may no longer dominate territory in the way it once threatened to during the early years of the conflict, but armed groups clearly retain operational capacity across multiple counties. The continued ability of fighters to ambush security forces, seize weapons and circulate footage online suggests that the war remains deeply entrenched beneath the surface calm that Cameroon is eager to project internationally.
The timing of the attacks is also symbolically significant. They come just days before Cameroon’s annual May 20 National Day rituals — festivities that Ambazonian groups banned years ago across the territory. For nearly eight years, Ambazonian movements have declared both the February 11 Youth Day celebrations and May 20 National Day illegitimate in territories they consider independent Ambazonia.
