Plateau villagers pick eight bandit’s corpses after deadly clash

The Military Information Officer, Operation Safe Haven, in Plateau State, Major Ishaku Takwa, on Tuesday said bandits attacked Angwan Bashar community and another community in the Kanam Local Government Area of the state.

Takwa told The PUNCH in Jos that after the attacks on the two communities, the bandits were repelled by the troops in conjunction with the local vigilante group, adding that eight corpses of some of the bandits were recovered by the villagers.

Takwa said, “There was an attack by bandits yesterday (Monday) in the night on Angwa Bashar in Kanam LGA.

“Before our troops arrived with heavy gunfire, the vigilante men were already engaging the bandits. So, the troops in conjunction with the vigilante men were able to repel the attack. But as the attack in Angwan Bashar was going on, we received information that another set of bandits was attacking another village within the council area.

So our troops withdrew from Angwan Bashar and moved to the said community and repelled the attack. After the operation, the villagers told us that they recovered eight corpses but our troops did not suffer any casualty.

Takwa, who described the onslaught against the bandits in the two communities as successful, called on the people to always provide the military and other security agents with timely information to enable them to protect the people.

“A criminal is a criminal. All that is going on in that area is criminality, whether cattle rustling, kidnapping, or attack on a community. They are all the same. All that we need is for the people to let us know in time about the activities of these criminals so that we can deal with the situation”, the Military Information Officer added.

One of the vigilante men, who participated in repelling the attacks, Tasiu Ibrahim, said that before the attack on their communities, the bandits had given them notices to quit their area.

Ibrahim said, “We got the notices to quit last week Tuesday where the bandits said we must leave our villages or they will kill all of us. We also learnt that similar notices to quit were served on other villages by the bandits.

“We thank God that they did not succeed when they eventually carried out their threat to kill all of us. Instead, some of them were the ones who died because we recovered about eight of their corpses after they attacked us.”