<<Print>>

Three persons died at Ekumfi Narkwa in the Mfantseman District of the Central Region yesterday following fierce ethnic clashes between indigenous Fantes and Ewe settlers in the community. This was after the lifeless body of 50-year-old Nana Kojo Agyase, who is also the Ebusuapanyin of Narkwa, the backyard of President Atta Mills, was discovered on his farm with his head and limbs cut under bizarre circumstances. The body of Nana Agyase, who had gone missing, was discovered on his farm after hours of search. This, according to residents of Narkwa, raised suspicion which compelled them to set up a team in search of him. His mutilated body was hurriedly buried in a shallow grave. After several hours, the team finally discovered his body buried under a coconut plantation in his farm, with a severed head and parts of his body stuck out of the grave. This brings to three, the number of deaths recorded in the ethnic clashes between the Fantes and Ewes in the area. A source close to Daily Guide hinted that they called the Mfantseman Municipal Police Command to inform them about the tragedy, but the police were alleged to have told the residents that it was late and that they would be at the scene the next morning. The source further disclosed that the police went to the scene yesterday to retrieve the body and later conveyed it to the morgue of the Central Regional Hospital for autopsy. Mfantseman Municipal Police Commander, Assistant Superintendent of Police (ASP) David Ashong, disclosed that his outfit received a call that somebody had been killed in the area, a situation which compelled him to dispatch his men to the scene on Thursday. According to the police, it was after they had conveyed the body to the morgue around 9:30am that they received information of a clash between indigenous Fantes and Ewe settlers in the area resulting in the death of another man, Kojo Munkoh, who was 40 years old. The police commander indicated that the Fantes, who suspected the Ewe settlers of being behind the murder of their kinsman, started running riot and in the process, torched seven thatched houses belonging to the Ewes who also retaliated. Ten people who sustained various degrees of injury in a shootout were said to have been rushed to the Saltpond Hospital for treatment. Four of those injured were said to have been transferred to the Central Regional Hospital in Cape Coast for treatment. Munkoh�s body had since been deposited at the morgue of the Saltpond hospital. The police have since mounted a search for the severed head and the culprits, asking both factions to exercise restraint to enable them to unravel the mystery surrounding the gruesome murder. The Mfantseman Municipal Chief Executive and Chairman of the Municipal Security Committee (MUSEC), Henry Kweku Hayfron, told Joy Fm in an interview that members of the Fante community attacked the Ewe community upon suspicion that some of them might have perpetrated the crime. �They were gunshots, one is dead and three people have been injured,� the MCE said, adding that �now there is some normalcy but we are still investigating.�