At least four people were killed in southern Nigeria after an attack by unidentified gunmen against a convoy of a US diplomatic delegation, authorities said.
“The attackers killed two agents of the Mobile Police Force (PMF) and two employees of the consulate,” explained the spokesman for the Anambra State Police, where the shooting took place, Tochukwu Ikenga.
According to Tochukwu, the attack began at 3:50 p.m. local time on the road between the towns of Atani and Osamale.
Later, the gunmen “burned the corpses and their vehicles,” the police representative revealed.
“The arsonists and murderers, after verifying that the security forces responded, kidnapped two police officers and the driver of a second vehicle, and fled,” he added.
Tochukwu claimed that there were no US citizens in the convoy.
For its part, the US State Department corroborated what happened and noted that it is “working with the Nigerian security services to investigate it.”
The site of the attack is one of the strongholds of the Nigerian separatist group Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), which the authorities have blamed for attacks on security forces, prisons and electoral commission facilities.
The tension in the region originated from May 30, 1967, when, in the midst of ethnic tensions due to the constant coups d’état, Emeka Ojukwu, governor of the Eastern region of Nigeria, announced the creation of the Republic of Biafra to protect the Igbo clan, the object of massacres in the north of the African nation.
Likewise, the military government of Nigeria tried to regain control by force, unleashing a civil war that caused approximately two million deaths, mainly caused by the famine that devastated the region after a two-year blockade.
With information from EFE
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