ABOUT five persons were feared killed in a clash in Rivers State on New Year’s Day. One of those killed is the son of the Chief Priest of a popular deity in Asarama, a community in Andoni Local Government Area.
The Nation gathered that the clash followed tension which peaked in the community on New Year’s Day eve over renewed chieftaincy and political crises gripping the area.
Details of the latest incident were not immediately available as of press time, but sources said some armed youths engaged themselves in a bloody tussle for supremacy.
One of the youth gangs, said to be members of the Icelander, a militia group, accosted and allegedly shot to death the 25-year-old son of the Chief Priest.
The said slain man was identified as Samuel Fubarabonye. The killing was said to have flared up passions in the area.
Spokesperson of the State Police Command, Mrs. Rita Inoma-Abbey, a Deputy Superintendent (DSP), confirmed the outbreak of violence in the community.Speaking in a telephone interview with The Nation, Mrs. Inoma-Abbey added that on getting a report on the fighting in the area, the police authorities deployed a detachment of mobile police to the flashpoint to contain the situation.
Some arrests had been affected, she said, with the help of local authorities in the area.
Meanwhile, guns boomed in the busy creek market, Port Harcourt, the state capital, as heavily armed naval personnel fired shots indiscriminately in the air.
The sound of guns consequently caused a stampede in the market.
Sources at the scene said there appeared to be no particular reason for the shooting by the personnel who operated from a moving Navy vehicle.
The naval men, identified as mere ratings, are from the Naval Base in Borokiri.
Reacting to the incident, an environmental rights activist Mr. Patrick Naagbanton said: “This madness must stop in this new year.”