12 killed in Plateau midnight attack

Jos- Twelve people were killed and several others injured in a fresh attack on Rwang Fang village in Mangu Local Government Area of Plateau in the early hours of Tuesday by unknown assailants.

Among those killed was a driver, his wife and their four children.

The military Special Task Force (STF) Spokesman, Capt. Charles Ekeocha, who confirmed the incident  blamed the villagers for not contacting the force on time.

He said: “The attack was carried out around midnight, but the villagers did not inform us until the attackers had fled.

“A military helicopter has been deployed there for aerial surveillance, because some cattle were also rustled during the attack.”

Ekeocha said more troops had been deployed to beef up security in the area, and that men of the force were on the trail of the assailants.

He said relevant information about the victims would be released later, and promised that the military was on top of the situation.

Also men of the joint Special Task Force (STF) in charge of the security in troubled Plateau have arrested 60 youths suspected to be miscreants in some “hostile communities’’ in Jos.

The development followed a night raid, which Capt. Charles Ekeocha, said would “soon become a more regular exercise toward freeing the capital city of hoodlums’’.

“What we want to do is to check cases of silent attacks and secret killings that are fast becoming  the order of the day in some parts of the metropolis lately,’’ he said in Jos on Tuesday.
According to him, the intelligence department of the STF is responsible for the raid and they did that based on intelligence reports they received in those areas.

He, however, said that those who have no case to answer would be released later, while those who could help the force with “some relevant information” would be kept further.

Ekeocha said that the raid would continue in some designated places in the metropolis until hoodlums engaged to foment trouble are chased out of the communities.