At least eight children killed and many wounded after attackers stormed a school in Cameroon

Cameroon: At least eight children lost their lives and a dozen injured after attackers assailed a school in southwestern Cameroon with rifles and sickles, the United Nations announced.

Appearing on motorbikes and in common clothes, the men stormed the Mother Francisca International Bilingual Academy in the town of Kumba, in the nation's Southwest Region, at approximate midday on Saturday.

There was no instant declaration of accountability for the attack, defined by the UN as “the worst atrocity” since the resumption of the school year beginning this month.

It was not apparent if the attack was connected to an ongoing conflict between government forces and armed societies in the English-speaking west trying to form a breakaway country.

“At least eight children were brutally killed as a result of gunshots and crime with knives. Another twelve were injured and carried to local hospitals,” the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) announced in a declaration. Some children were reportedly wounded while escaping from second-storey windows.

Videos disseminating on social media recorded by local journalists resembled to reveal adults were hastening from the school with kids in their arms, encircled by mourning eyewitnesses.

One photo confirmed by the Reuters news agency noted the centre of a classroom, where a heap of drained blood had merged on the ground near some dispersed flip-flops.

“They noticed the children in the class, and they initiated fire on them,” city sub-prefect Ali Anougou told media.

Isabel Dione rushed into the school to search for her 12-year-old daughter when she discovered about the firing. She found her on the ground of a classroom, bleeding from the abdomen.

“She was helpless and she was screaming ‘mum, please heal me’, and I said her ‘only your God can save you now’,” Dione told Reuters. The girl was raced to hospital where she is enduring surgery for a gunshot wound.

Local education official Ahhim Abanaw Obase verified six deaths of children aged between 12 and 14 and stated that another eight kids had been taken to the nearby hospital.