Four members of Cameroon’s prisons department, including a regional manager, were allegedly killed in an ambush by armed men in a troubled anglophone region, a senior official told Wednesday.

Cameroon’s Northwest and Southwest districts are populated chiefly by anglophones, some of whom feel excluded by the nation’s French-talking greater part.

Since 2017, separatists seeking self-rule have clashed with the security forces — a conflict that has claimed more than 6,000 lives and displaced around a million people, according to the International Crisis Group (ICG).

“An ambush by separatists on Tuesday claimed the lives of the regional representative of the prison administration of the Northwest Region and three of his colleagues on the road between Nkambe and Kumbo,” regional prefect Gilbert Menyong Sunday told AFP by phone.

On March 2, seven people, including a local official and a mayor, were killed by gunmen on a road in the Southwest Region.

Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) announced on April 5 it was suspending humanitarian work in the Southwest Region after four local employees had been accused of “complicity” with rebels.

The equipped gatherings are blamed by the experts for abducting, killing or ruining regular citizens whom they blame for “teaming up” with the state.