President Paul Biya:

A separatist commander, simply known as Obi, was among five insurgents killed in Owe, a locality in South-West, one of the two troubled Anglophone regions of Cameroon, the Cameroon Army said.

The death of Obi was confirmed by Kingsley Ashu, a separatist leader in a Facebook post.

According to security reports, Obi was a key commander of the separatist and his physical elimination could prove a major blow to the rebels in Cameroon’s South-West region.

The Cameroon army had since beefed up security in the restive English-speaking regions of North-West and South-West as separatists prepared to celebrate the third independence anniversary on Tuesday.

On Oct. 1, 2017, separatists, who had been clashing with government forces, symbolically declared the “independence” of the two regions from the majority French-speaking Cameroon and had been celebrating the day since then.

Meanwhile, on Monday, a national dialogue opened in the capital, Yaounde, to end the separatist conflict that had killed hundreds and displaced over 530,000 internally.