YAOUNDE, Dec 10 (Reuters) - Cameroon will send food and medicine on Monday to some 8,000 citizens sheltering in its diplomatic missions in Equatorial Guinea to escape harassment from police and the population, state media said Monday.

A wave of violence against Cameroonians living in Equatorial Guinea erupted on Wednesday after gunmen robbed two banks in the second city Bata, shooting passers-by before fleeing in speedboats toward Cameroon.

State radio said 3,000 citizens were sheltering in the Cameroonian embassy in Equatorial Guinea's island capital of Malabo and a further 5,000 were holed up in Bata on the African mainland.

"The government has taken a series of measures connected to the calvary being suffered by our compatriots in Equatorial Guinea," state radio said, adding that a Hercules C130 cargo plane would carry supplies and eventually repatriate some Cameroonian citizens.

Equatorial Guinean authorities have summoned Cameroon's charge d'affaires in Malabo to report to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for unknown reasons, it added.

Witnesses in Malabo said armed police stood guard outside the Cameroonian embassy on Monday to prevent any more people from seeking refuge or entering the embassy. Cameroonians' homes and businesses were attacked and looted.

A former Spanish colony, Equatorial Guinea was long one of the poorest and most insular states in Africa. But the discovery of large offshore oil reserves in the 1990s revolutionised its economy and attracted thousands of Cameroonian immigrants, fuelling social tensions.

Equatorial Guinea's government says its population exceeds 1 million, but UN officials say it may be considerably less.

In a tit-for-tat attack, some 150 Equatorial Guinean students were mobbed in the southwest Cameroonian university town of Buea, and were forced to seek refuge in a police station, local press reported. About 50 of them chose to be deported, the paper said. (Reporting by Tansa Musa; Editing by Daniel Flynn)

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