…as assailants disguised as mourners fired p bullets on officers
Clement Nnachi (abakaliki)
The Ebonyi State Police Command has confirmed the killing of three officers by assailants who disguised as mourners fired bullets on the officers.
The Police Public Relations Officer PPRO Lovet Odah, disclosed this to newsmen on Thursday morning in a telephone interview.
The PPRO said that the slain Policemen along side their colleagues were on patrol duty along Onuebonyi/Nwezenyi axis of the popular abakaliki /Ogoja Expressway at about 7.30 pm when the assailants struck struck.
“According to the PPRO,’ Our Safer Highway patrol team on Stop and Search patrol along Ogoja /abakaliki Expressway by Nwezenyi junction , while they were on patrol. some people disguised as mourners attending burials , opened fire on police patrol vehicles”
“They were a kind of having burial rallies, three motorcycles, three tricycles before the three Sienna buses following them, in the process of looking at them, the assailants opened fire and killed the officers very closer to them at check point”
“The assailants equally shot at the officers at Sentry , we are suspecting that some of the assailants were also wounded”
“The assailants are yet to be identified. they were said to have operated with a bus with which they escaped”
DSP Lovet Odah said that a Deputy Commissioner of Police has gone on an assessment to the areas to ascertain the level of damage and to unravel what actually happened.
However, an eye witness informed newsmen that three other policemen sustained severe bullet wounds by the time the attack was over.
The attacked police officers were later confirmed dead by doctors on duty at the Alex Ekwueme Federal University Teaching Hospital (AE-FUTHA) abakaliki .
Their bodies have also been deposited at the hospital’s mortuary.
The killing of the three police officers is coming barely one week after similar assassination attempt on police personnel on duty last Thursday at Umuoghara in Ezza North Local Government Area of the State.
It would be recalled that the south east geo-political zone had in recent times witnessed an unprecedented rise in kidnapping, attack on police officers. police stations and Correctional Services.
