Cameroon’s Minister of Defense Joseph Beti Assomo visited the military hospital in Yaounde on Thursday to pay homage to some 90 Francophone soldiers wounded in battles in Southern Cameroons.

“These are soldiers who are wounded in the northwest and southwest regions. They still have very high morale. Some of them even declared to us that they want to go back to the field and fight,” Assomo told reporters.

Thirty soldiers are bedridden with “serious injuries” in the hospital and some 60 others come for daily treatment according to the hospital records.

Assomo said the bravery of the soldiers in the battles was exemplary.

According to the Cameroon army, at least 150 soldiers have been killed in the two Anglophone regions of Northwest and Southwest where Southern Cameroons Restoration Forces are fighting to defend the independent nation they call “the Federal Republic of Ambazonia.”

Xinhuanet with additional editing from CIR