The Nigerian Army has called on the perpetrators of the attack on Okporojo, Oso Edda in Edda Local Government Area of Ebonyi State to release the heads of the victims they took away after beheading them.
Suspected warlords had last week invaded the community, killed five persons and cut off the heads of four of them.
The warlords burnt many houses in the area and inflicted injuries on many residents.
The community has been at war over land with their neighbouring Amasiri in Afikpo Local Government Area of the State with many lives lost and property worth millions of naira destroyed.
The army, which condemned the attack on Okporojo, urged the perpetrators to release the heads of the deceased.
Cantonment Commander, Nkwagu Military Cantonment in the State, Lt Col. Ikenna Chielo who made the call, wondered why the killings when effort was going on to resolve the land dispute between the communities.
“Amasiri crisis did not start today, it’s a long time crisis, even the past administration made efforts to resolve it.
“Committee was set up to resolve it, it involved a lot of people. I think the present, traditional ruler of Amasiri was the chairman of the committee at that and a report was made on the crisis.
“It was forwarded to the government. And when this government came and said, okay, let’s implement this, a lot of work has been done by the present government to resolve the crisis. While these efforts were on, people were killed.
“One of the key issues is that we want the heads of those people. You can’t kill people. It’s not enough that you kill them.
“You now cut off their heads as if they are animals. What are you doing to the heads of your fellow human beings? And what is even more painful is that these are our brothers. It’s not as if it’s Yoruba or Hausa or any other tribe or someone from Mali or Niger.
“These are people from the same ancestors. It’s really saddening. While I was growing up, I never imagined that something like this could happen in Nigeria,” he said
Lt. Col Chielo dismissed the rumour making the rounds that two military personnel deployed to the community were killed.
“What happened was that the first day of our deployment, probably they assumed that the strength of the soldiers there were very few.
“And they came and attacked us, actually and we responded. The only thing is that, because the area was a built-up area, they had to be cautious so that we don’t have casualties of shooting stray bullets and killing innocent people in their homes.
“If not, that night, a lot of things would have gone wrong. We just tried to be very professional. If we had used annoyance or emotion to act that night, it would have been bloody. We were attacked, aside that, none of my soldiers have been killed in this operation”.
