Four Police officers have been killed by gunmen in Imo State, South-east Nigeria.
Leading Reporters gathered that the incident occurred at about 6:30 p.m. on Monday along Owerri-Onitsha Road in Owerri, the state capital.
According to an eye witness, the hoodlums attacked the operatives at their checkpoint in the area.
“Yes. The gunmen attacked the policemen at their checkpoint close to Blossom Hotel and killed four of them,”
“They also shot at passers-by, but only one lady who used to do POS at the junction died at the spot. She was shot at close range,” he stated.
Another witness, said the attackers must have been enforcers of the illegal sit-at-home order, given their style of operation.
“Aside from the police people they killed, they were just shooting at people indiscriminately as if they wanted people to go home,” he said.
He lamented that the area had become a hotbed of gunmen attacks lately.
The police spokesperson in Imo State, Henry Okoye, has confirmed the killing. He said in a statement on Monday that the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) was behind the attack.
The operatives were ambushed while on a routine patrol at Irete, at the Owerri-Onitsha Expressway, he said.
Mr Okoye said the Commissioner of Police in Imo, Aboki Danjuma, has condemned the killing of the operatives and the civilian, describing it as a “gruesome murder.”
The spokesperson said the police commissioner “has deployed the command’s Tactical Units with the available operational assets and intelligence to go all out in synergy with other security agencies and hunt down the hoodlums responsible for the attack”.
