BY TONY NYONG

UYO – NO fewer than 12 persons  were feared  killed in a communal clash, weekend, in some parts of Mbiabet Ikpe, in Ini Local Government Area of Akwa Ibom State, while the Village Head of Mbiabet Ikot Uwa, who was abducted on the night of the mayhem is yet to return to his community. Meanwhile, sources say he may still be alive.

The headless body of one of the victims was taken by the Divisional Police Officer of the area in the company of the council chairman to the morgue.

All the houses in Ayehedia village with a population of  3,000, people were leveled, as all the indigenes of the community had been sacked and forced to take refuge in neighbouring Mbiabet Ikot Udo, Ikpe Ikot Nkon, Mbiabet Esieyere and Ibam Edet villages.

Domestic animals were completely wiped out, while farmlands in the once peaceful community, whose major occupation is subsistence farming, had been totally ravaged by irate youths of the warring communities.

There are seven villages that make up Mbiabet Ikpe, and although they  have a history of land dispute between the two villages, the problem, according to sources,  this time around, started when a certain Joshua  Job of Itie Ikpe, who had set a local fishing trap, discovered that  youths from  nearby Mbiabet Ikpe, close to  Ayehedia, had  removed the fishes from the trap in the night.

Joshua, it was learnt had gone back to set the trap, but this time around,  decided to keep vigil in a nearby bush all through the night. Late in the night, two youths from the other village were said to have gone to the first trap and  emptied its catch  into their bag and left to hide it somewhere.

On their return to empty the second trap, Joshua, who had watched from his hideout, quietly crawled to where they kept the first bag, took hold of it, and  waited for the boys, who quickly returned to pick the bag along with their second harvest.

Joshua, it was learnt, attacked them, leaving  machete cuts on one of the boys while the other escaped unhurt back to his village.

The two boys, it was gathered,  went home and organised youths from their village and the next morning, waylaid innocent indigenes of their assailant’s village, who were going to  market, but  when  youths of the other village became aware of the attack, they  mobilized themselves and fought back,  resulting to the death of seven persons in the first day of the clash.