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YAOUNDE (Reuters) - Police shot and killed two students when they stormed a university campus in the capital Yaounde late on Wednesday to quell a riot, witnesses said on Thursday. They said police opened fire on the third day of worsening violence at Yaounde's Buea University, the bilingual country's only English-speaking university, where students are protesting over alleged examination irregularities. "One of the students was shot in the head and he died instantly while another one who was shot in the abdomen died on the way to hospital after losing too much blood," said eyewitness Boudih Adams, a deputy editor at The Post newspaper. A student at the university confirmed the two deaths and said students had begun to mass at one side of the campus, in Yaounde's Molyko district, in a possible sign of further trouble. Many African universities are prone to outbreaks of student violence over lack of resources, poor conditions and scarce job opportunities, and these often trigger broader political demonstrations. "The situation is still tense on and around the campus," said the student, who declined to be identified. "There are armed police all over, vehicles are not circulating and the streets are deserted. But some students have begun to gather again at a corner of the campus," he said. Police and government officials in the central African country were unavailable for comment. The dispute began on Monday when students protested after university authorities admitted 33 students to sit oral tests for admission to a new faculty of medicine, even though they had not sat the written exam like the 127 other applicants. Student leaders said they suspected the additional students had paid bribes to university staff members. Students' suspicions deepened because of rumours that all 33 additional students were French speakers -- a sensitive matter in Cameroon, where English and French are both official languages but French speakers are in the majority and control the political establishment. In a separate outbreak of violence, state radio said a civilian and a gendarme (paramilitary policeman) were killed in clashes between security forces and rice farmers in Far North Province over plans by the country's biggest rice company to redistribute land, reducing the plots allocated to some farmers.
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