Makurdi, Nigeria | Thursday
RAMPAGING soldiers continued reprisal attacks on Wednesday in some parts of Nigeria’s central Benue State, where they have already killed more than 100 people, a leading government official said.
The attacks focused on the town of Zaki Biam, from where 19 soldiers were abducted and subsequently slain by militiamen two weeks ago, according to Agia Gingiri, special adviser to the state governor on security.
“This afternoon, the whole of Zaki Biam was engulfed in smoke and we were hearing gun shots. They were shooting at the buildings in the town,” Gingiri told correspondents.
“I cannot say whether there was any casualty but it was a total destruction. I do not think there will be any building left in the town after the destruction,” said the official, who had just returned from a visit to the town.
He said the soldiers had almost completely burned down the market in Zaki Biam, believed to be the largest yam market in west Africa.
Hundreds of people are also fleeing the town, populated by some 20 000 residents, other officials said.
A journalist working for Benue Radio and Television, Shehu Umar, who visited the town earlier Wednesday, said he had seen about a dozen bodies lying in the streets.
The soldiers have since Monday been on the rampage in some Benue towns to avenge the deaths of their colleagues, government officials said.
“The soldiers, armed to the teeth, have engaged in killing and massive destruction in Benue State,” said government representative Becky Orpin.
“In the operation … the soldiers used sophisticated weapons and attacked several towns,” she said.
A government official in the Benue State press office earlier named the towns as Anyiin, Gbeji, Iorja and Vaase — all on the border of Benue and Taraba States.
Over 100 people have been killed since Monday evening,” the press office official said.
The slain soldiers had been sent on a peacekeeping mission to separate communities on the border of the two feuding south central states a fortnight ago.
The soldiers, whose corpses were found mutilated, were buried on Monday in the country’s capital Abuja with an order by President Olusegun Obasanjo that their killers should be found and brought to book.
Meanwhile, soldiers were deployed on Wednesday in Makurdi, the state capital, where university students staged violent protests earlier in the day to protest at the killings by the soldiers.
Three camps for displaced people have been set up in the state, said officials, who were expecting an imminent influx.
The Benue State government on Wednesday imposed an indefinite curfew on Makurdi and Gboko, the two most important cities in the state, to forestall further breakdown of law and order, an official statement said.
The killings mark the military’s second massive reprisal attack since the return to civilian rule in Nigeria.
Two years ago, more than 300 people were killed in Odi, a town in southern Bayelsa State, following the murder of about a dozen policemen in the town.
Odi was completely destroyed by the soldiers in an attack widely condemned by human rights organisations and for which the government of President Olusegun Obasanjo has yet to apologise.
The action took place less than six months after the installation of Obasanjo as civilian president following more than 15 years of military rule.
Obasanjo’s army chief at the time, lieutenant general Victor Malu, warned then against sending soldiers to do police duties.
“Soldiers are trained to kill. Next time do not invite soldiers for such an assignment,” he told journalists.
Government representative Orpin said that in the latest reprisal attack, soldiers had attacked the family house of Malu and allegedly killed some of his relations. – AFP