On 1 June 2022, Cameroonian soldiers of the 53rd Motorized Infantry Battalion killed nine civilians in the village of Missong [fr], Northwest Region during the Anglophone Crisis.
A Human Rights Watch report after the killings found that nine civilians in Missong (a settlement in Zhoa, Fungom District [fr]) had been killed by the military, relying on testimony from five eyewitnesses and a village elder,[1] describing it as "a reprisal operation against a community suspected of harboring separatist fighters.
According to a government enquiry the soldiers responded in a "inappropriate" and "manifestly disproportionate" manner by murdering four men, four women and an 18-month-old girl.
A one-year-old child was lightly wounded and transferred to the hospital.
[3] The federal enquiry and admission by the army was among the first of its kind by the army during the Anglophone Crisis,[4][5] and welcomed as "a positive step" by Human Rights Watch.