Pupils abducted from school in Cameroon's restive South-West

Dozens of pupils were on Tuesday abducted from a school in Cameroon's restive South-West province by suspected separatists, a Ministry of Communication spokesperson told dpa.

The school's principal and a teacher were also abducted by the gunmen from the Lourdes Bilingual School in the town of Kumba at around midday (1100 GMT), said Ebane Kome Slezor.

"The school gates were closed," Slezor said. "When the kidnappers came over the walls into the campus, some brave students ... climbed up the walls from another side and escaped."

According to reports, the number of pupils led away from the secondary school on foot numbered between 25 and 30. Slezor said she was unable to give an exact number.

Earlier this month, separatists safely returned 79 pupils they had abducted at gunpoint from a Presbyterian school in the country's west.

Cameroon, a former French colony in West Africa, has been troubled by unrest since its two main English-speaking areas, the North-West and South-West regions, announced in 2016 that they wished to secede and form a new country called Ambazonia.

English speakers in Cameroon have long complained of being treated like second-class citizens and getting less government funding.

This year, deadly violence marked by indiscriminate killings and mass displacement has been escalating in the Anglophone regions, according to human rights group Amnesty International.

Over the past months, armed separatists have stabbed and shot military personnel, burned down schools and attacked teachers.