A gang of 13 suspected bandits have fallen into the dragnets of elements of the National Gendarmerie following weeks of investigations.

The gang made up of 12 men and one woman was nabbed as they were preparing for one of their ‘missions’.

According to Commander Jean Alain Ndongo, the head of the investigative team that apprehended the suspects, the group has carried out over 20 burglaries in Yaounde, Douala and Limbe.

They will finally meet their end during an operation on January 23 in the Mokolo neighbourhood in Yaounde where they killed a gendarme officer Giresse Kete.

“After this robbery in Mokolo, several phones were stolen. We started to trace these phones. That’s how we came across the gang leader. The one I will call the brain behind the gang. And from here, it was easy to pursue with the investigations and pick up all the gang members,” Jean Alain Ndongo said.

The suspects were in possession of weapons, an automatic pistol, a revolver, seven locally made pistols as well as ammunition and huge sums of money, he added.

Further investigations by elements of the Yaounde I Gendarmerie Company Brigade, revealed some members of the gang had burgled the premises of a betting firm in the Mballa II neighbourhood in Yaounde on September 19, 2019 which led to the death of one person.

Apart from the lady in the gang, most of the members are either ex convicts or had escaped from jail, Jean Alain Ndongo said.