Cameroon--Authorities Investigate Weapons Trafficking

AFP in French to Africa 1156 GMT 24 August 1999

[FBIS Translated Text] Yaounde, 24 Aug [AFP]--The Cameroonian Government has opened an investigation into weapons trafficking in eastern Cameroon.

The weapons reportedly came in from the Democratic Republic of Congo [DRC], official sources announced today in Yaounde.

Alerted by the Eastern Province authorities which denounced a "strong concentration of fire arms" in their region, the Cameroonian Defense Ministry dispatched to the spot a mission charged with "assessing the situation," the same sources said.

According to first reports by the local authorities, the weapons are being sold by Congolese nationals crossing the borders along with refugees fleeing the fighting in Congo and the DRC and "smugglers from the Central African Republic [CAR] and Chad."

There has been "an increasing crime wave" in the province since the proliferation of fire arms there, the local authorities said. They stated that there have been "several cases of hold-ups in shops, homes, and even in the streets." "Gangs of carjackers" have reportedly come in through the

Eastern Province and sold "their goods" on the other side of the border, in the CAR and in Congo Brazzaville, the authorities also denounced.  

The Defense Ministry announced that it was going to carry out an investigation at the level of the police, the Gendarmerie, and the customs department so as to "fish out any complicity between certain elements in these bodies and the criminals."