Since the incident occurred last week, the circumstances surrounding the killings had been attracting wide comments, with insinuations that men of the operation Safe Haven aided the Fulani to massacre the people.
The OPSH Commander, who spoke with Sunday Tribune through the spokesman of the command, Captain Umar Adam, narrated that the attackers, in a large number, stormed Nkiedonwhro village on that particular day, shooting sporadically into the air while the people ran to the operational base of the Operation Safe Haven at a primary school in the village.
“As the attackers advanced towards the OPSH base, the men on ground had to engage them, the attackers were in their large number, but unknown to the security men they had surrounded the village and some of them came from the behind while our men were engaging them and killed the 29 taking refuge at the primary school which our men use as a base.”
According to him, it is wrong for anybody to insinuate that the men on duty aided the attackers to kill the people.
He said the security men acted in accordance with the mandate given them and strictly followed rules of engagement.
He said that the command had been up and doing to arrest the situation since the crisis started and intervened on different occasions to ensure that such development in the area did not escalate.
The crisis, he said, started when a Fulani was beheaded with fingers pointing at the Iriwes.
“To douse the tension then, we called all the aggrieved parties to meeting at sector headquarters, but the Fulani insisted that the Irigwe must produce the head of the Fulani boy that was beheaded.”
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