Hundreds Of Thousands 'Fled Homes In Cameroon'

Some 160,000 people have fled their homes in Cameroon's English-speaking region since 2016, AFP news agency says, quoting a report by the UN.

"The majority of the displaced have fled into the bush with little to survive on" says the report by the UN's humanitarian agency.

The report also said that about 20,000 people had crossed to neighbouring Nigeria, a number 14,000 short of what Nigeria's State Emergency Management Agency (Sema) estimates, AFP adds.

The current crisis in the Anglophone north-west and south-west regions was sparked by a growing feeling of discrimination.

English speakers say they are excluded from top civil service jobs and that government documents are often only published in French, even though English is also an official language.

An armed separatist group has been pushing for an independent state called Ambazonia.

The group has been accused of kidnapping officials and other French-speaking Cameroonians, while the army is accused of abuses and burning houses.