Residents and a Reuters reporter claimed that during an attack on a community in the South West region of anglophone Cameroon on Thursday, armed militants halted cars, fired at occupants, and set vehicles on fire.

Since 2017, separatists have been battling to create an independent state named Ambazaonia in Cameroon’s minority English-speaking regions. The North West and South West regions are the locations of their attacks, kidnappings, and murders.

Concerned-looking residents gathered around the blackened and bullet-ridden remains of a charred car in the village of Muea, in the South West region, on Thursday as two men pulled out a body wrapped in a blanket.

Sobbing relatives identified and took away two bodies, according to a Reuters reporter at the scene.

Residents said the attackers arrived early in the morning, on the week schools reopened after the summer break, and that several people were killed.

Insurgents began fighting the Cameroonian military in 2017 after civilian protests calling for greater representation for the Francophone country’s English-speaking minority were violently repressed.

Schools are often targets of attacks and Cameroon’s education system has been heavily disrupted as a result.

As in past years, separatists had ordered schools not to re-open and imposed a lockdown.