DOUALA: Four people were killed in clashes between security forces and supporters of a Cameroon opposition leader who claims to have won recent presidential elections, a regional governor said, ahead of official results announced Monday.
Issa Tchiroma, who challenged President Paul Biya's 43-year grip on power in the October 12 vote, had called on his supporters to march peacefully on the eve of the announcement, despite a ban on public gatherings.
Tchiroma says he won 54.8 percent of the vote, but most analysts expect the 92-year-old Biya to win an eighth term in a system his critics say has been increasingly rigged.
In Cameroon's largest city Douala, the regional governor said demonstrators "attacked" a gendarmerie brigade and police stations in two districts.
"Four people unfortunately lost their lives," said Samuel Dieudonne Ivaha Diboua, adding that several members of the security forces were also injured.
Earlier, police had fired teargas to disperse hundreds of people in Tchiroma's northern stronghold of Garoua, where activists carried Cameroonian flags and banners reading "Tchiroma 2025" and chanted "Goodbye Paul Biya, Tchiroma is coming".
For several days, dozens of supporters have gathered around the home of the opposition leader, who claimed in a video Sunday that military personnel had tried to take him away.
In the capital Yaounde, the call to protest did not seem to have been followed amid a heavy police presence.
But in Douala, prior to the reported clashes, an AFP journalist observed several dozen people gathered near the airport, defying the ban on demonstrations ordered by the department's prefect.
Djeukam Tchameni, president of the Movement for Democracy and Interdependence in Cameroon (MDI), and Anicet Ekane, president of the African Movement for the New Independence of Cameroon (Manidem), were arrested at their homes in Douala on Friday, according to a coalition of parties that had nominated Tchiroma as the consensus opposition candidate.
Minister of Territorial Administration Paul Atanga Nji said on Saturday the protests "create the conditions for a security crisis" and contribute to "the implementation of an insurrectionist project".
