Three members of the same family have been killed and two others seriously injured in a fresh attack on Te’ebbe community, Miango district, in Bassa Local Government Area of Plateau State.
The victims, all farmers, were attacked while harvesting tomatoes on their farmland. The two survivors, who sustained life-threatening injuries, have been taken to a hospital in Jos for urgent treatment.
The incident occurred on the same day a government fact-finding committee was in the area to investigate the ongoing crisis in Plateau State. The committee, led by retired Major General Nicholas Roger, was holding peace talks with community leaders and security agencies at the Bassa Local Government secretariat when news of the attack broke.
General Roger and his team rushed to the scene alongside the local government chairman and security personnel. There, they confirmed the deaths of three women and assessed the condition of the wounded.
“This is one of the saddest days of my life,” said General Roger while speaking at the scene. “We were holding talks about peace in Bassa when we heard about the attack. We saw the bodies of three innocent women. One man was critically injured, and another has been taken to Jos.”
He said the victims were harmless civilians simply trying to harvest their tomatoes when they were attacked.
The killings sparked protests among Irigwe youths in the community, but the situation was quickly brought under control by the committee and local leaders, who appealed for calm and urged the people not to take the law into their hands.
The Plateau crisis has claimed thousands of lives since 2001, and Governor Caleb Mutfwang’s administration recently launched a probe to uncover the root causes and propose long-lasting solutions to the violence.
