Posted by By George Onah on
THE three months communal war between the South Ukelle people and their Izzi neighbours both of Cross River State, has not abated, just as fierce fighting resumed Friday night till the early hours of Monday June 20th.
CALABAR - THE three months communal war between the South Ukelle people and their Izzi neighbours both of Cross River State, has not abated, just as fierce fighting resumed Friday night till the early hours of Monday June 20th.
Eleven people were reported to have been wounded, some of them critically, when the Izzi combatants allegedly launched attack on two villages in Ntrigom clan, causing pandemonium in the area.
Villagers who had returned to the troubled community after a lull in the fighting fled their homes for safety. Scores of houses which were said to have been recently refurbished were set ablaze again.
Following the "unprovoked attack by the Izzi soldiers", three clan heads of Ntrigom, Ijigatom and Ijokom, raced to the Divisional Police Headquarters in Okpoma, Yala Council and reported that they were caught unaware by their attackers, in view of the truce between them.
Both sides were forbidden from fighting one another after Governor Donald Duke and his Ebonyi State counterpart Governor Sam Egwu visited the troubled spot last month.
Vanguard learnt that the DPO who was not available for comment, had sent words to the Ogoja Area Command, seeking immediate help to surmount the renewed violence, which "may lead to fresh bloodshed, more than what was witnessed in the last war". The fight which started in Ntrigom was said to have spread through the bush to the suburbs of Ijokom and Ijigatom communities causing inhabitants to flee the area.
Most of the wounded were said to have been ferried through the bush path of the embattled villages to Ipollo and Mfuma highway, for onward movement to Yahe Cottage Hospital, also in Yala Council.
War erupted between the two erstwhile neighbours of nearly 85 years on April 16, 2005, when the cord of friendship that held the two groups for so long, snapped.