GUNMEN kidnapped 79 school students on Monday in an English-speaking region of Cameroon where separatists are fighting an armed campaign for independence, security and government sources said.

“Seventy-nine pupils and three supervisors” were seized, Communications Minister Issa Tchiroma Bakary, who is also government spokesman, told AFP.

A government official said the three comprised the school’s principal, a teacher and a driver.

A source close to the school said the abducted students “are mainly boys.” A six-minute video seen by AFP, but which could not be immediately confirmed independently, showed 11 boys apparently aged about 15 giving their identity and name of the school in English, and adding that they were abducted by the “Amba Boys” -- the name for anglophone separatists.

The students kidnapped Monday were enrolled at the Presbyterian Secondary School in Bamenda, capital of Cameroon’s Northwest Region -- one of two regions hit by attacks by anglophone militants that have met with a brutal crackdown by the authorities.

“The search for the hostages has been launched -- every man has been called in,” the government source said, speaking after a crisis meeting.

Elsewhere in the region, a high-ranking local official was also seized, a security official told AFP.

The school’s website says that the student body numbers more than 700, drawn from “all the religious and linguistic origins of Cameroon.”

The kidnappings coincide with an upsurge of political tensions in the majority French-speaking country.

Around a fifth of Cameroon’s 22 million people are English-speaking -- a minority whose presence dates back to the colonial period.

Cameroon was divided between Britain and France after World War I. The French colony gained independence in 1960, becoming Cameroon. The following year, the British-ruled Southern Cameroons was amalgamated into it, giving rise to the Northwest and Southwest regions.

But resentment at perceived discrimination at the hands of the francophone majority, especially in education and the judiciary, began to build.

In 2016, demands for greater autonomy grew but have been rebuffed by newly re-elected president Paul Biya who has entered his seventh term.

As radicals took the ascendancy, the anglophone movement declared the creation of the “Republic of Ambazonia” in the Northwest and neighbouring Southwest Region on October 1, 2017.

No country has recognised the self-declared state.

The separatists have gunned down troops and police, boycotted and torched schools and attacked other perceived symbols of the Cameroonian state.

They have decreed a boycott of schools, saying that the French-speaking education system marginalises anglophone students.

At the start of the school year in September, several secondary schools were attacked, a headmaster was killed and a teacher was badly mutilated.

Hundreds have been killed in Cameroon’s Anglophone regions in the past year, where violence between armed separatists and the military has increased since a government crackdown against protesters in the northwest and southwest regions.

Violent separatists have taken up arms to destabilise the Anglophone regions to win independence for the areas they want to declare a separate state and have mounted attacks against civilians who do not support their cause.

There have been other kidnappings from schools in the region, but this is the largest number kidnapped at once. Armed separatists have even killed teachers who defied instructions to keep schools closed. They have torched at least a hundred schools and chased students and teachers from schools which they then take over as training grounds.

Last week separatist militants attacked workers on a state-run rubber plantation in southwestern Cameroon, chopping off their fingers because the men had defied an order to stay away from the farms.

They have decreed a boycott of schools, saying that the French-speaking education system marginalises anglophone students.

At the start of the school year in September, several secondary schools were attacked, a headmaster was killed and a teacher was badly mutilated.

An American missionary also died in the northwest region around Bamenda when he was shot in the head amid fighting between armed separatists and soldiers.

The turmoil in Cameroon comes as President Biya, who has led since 1982, easily won a seventh term last month in an election that the United States says was marked by irregularities.

The government did away with presidential term limits several years ago, part of a trend in Africa that has dismayed many.

Biya will be inaugurated on Tuesday, and many opposition supporters have said they will continue demonstrations until he leaves power.