Gunmen Open Fire On Yobe Traders, Kill Seven, Injure 11

…As Police Arrest Ring Leader

Seven traders were killed on Monday after armed men opened fire in Ngalda weekly main market in the Fika Local Government Area (LGA) of Yobe State.

The incident occurred at about 8 pm when gunmen shoot sporadically in an attempt to scare them off their business spot.

The Yobe Police Command in an interview with THE WHISTLER on Tuesday, confirmed that the armed men wielding weapons raided business owners in the market.

Items worth over N16m were reported to have been carted away. The assailants also robbed a POS operator during the operation.

The spokesperson of the command, DSP Dungus Abdulkarim, said, “However, the community took arms against them and were able to kill three out of six, and the remaining ran away.”

Abdulkarim noted that a total of 11 traders got injured, however, many of them were minor injuries.

Following police intervention, Abdulkarim said operatives were able to identify and arrest the gang’s ring leader, Datti Danga, while a manhunt for the rest of the remaining criminals are ongoing.

“Later on the police got the distress call, and deployed operatives to that area. In the course of our investigation, we were able to identify the ring leader, named Alhaji Datti Dangi.

“We took him out, and we are currently investigating him to get the three syndicate, which I think we are going to arrest them soon,” the spokesperson noted.

He revealed that the attack on one of Fika’s markets came as a shock to the police considering that crime in the LGA had been largely dealt with.

“Fika is bordering Gombe state, and it is one of the troubling areas when it comes to kidnapping and armed robbery but we were able to bring them down, and there were no more such threats.

“We were surprised to have seen such a massive attack because such has never happened before, even when Boko Haram was doing its activities

“Maybe because we were able to arrest some of the criminals and others were killed in the cause of engagement, they are trying to show the return of their operations,” he revealed.

The police spokesperson further noted that despite the recent incident, the command had invested in enhanced and effective community engagement and policing to build trust and confidence of residents.

Gunmen Open Fire On Yobe Traders, Kill Seven, Injure 11 is first published on The Whistler Newspaper