Paris, Aug. 13 -- French President Emmanuel Macron has acknowledged that France waged a "war" against independence efforts in Cameroon that was marked by "repressive violence," France 24 reported on Tuesday.

The acknowledgment came in a letter to Cameroonian President Paul Biya sent last month. It follows an officially commissioned report published in January that found France had carried out mass forced displacement, pushed hundreds of thousands of Cameroonians into internment camps, and supported brutal militias to suppress the country's push for sovereignty, France 24 said.

"The historians of the commission made it very clear that there was a war in Cameroon, during which the colonial authorities and the French army carried out repre...