Killings in Missong

On 1 June 2022, soldiers from Cameroon's 53rd Motorized Infantry Battalion killed nine civilians in the village of Missong, a settlement in Zhoa, Fungom District, in the Northwest Region of Cameroon. The killings occurred during the Anglophone Crisis, a long-running conflict between Cameroonian government forces and Anglophone separatist fighters in the country's Northwest and Southwest regions.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) published a report following the killings, based on testimony from five eyewitnesses and a village elder. The report characterized the incident as "a reprisal operation against a community suspected of harboring separatist fighters," implicating government soldiers in the deaths.

A few days after the HRW report was published, military spokesman Cyrille Serge Atonfack Guemo released the findings of a federal enquiry into the incident. According to this government enquiry, the soldiers had been conducting a search for a missing soldier when they were confronted by a group of angry residents. The enquiry found that the soldiers responded in a manner described as "inappropriate" and "manifestly disproportionate," resulting in the deaths of four men, four women, and an 18-month-old girl. A one-year-old child was also wounded in the incident and was transferred to a hospital for treatment.

The federal enquiry and the accompanying admission by the Cameroonian army were noted as being among the first instances of the army acknowledging responsibility for civilian killings during the Anglophone Crisis. Human Rights Watch welcomed the government's enquiry and admission as "a positive step."

No individuals have been publicly named as charged or convicted in connection with the killings based on currently available sourcing.