A 35-year-old man, Abdulai Suragu, was killed last Saturday around 6:30 am, with Haruna Issaka, 42 years, being shot in the shoulder when a market truck they were travelling with from Bawku was attacked by four armed men at Tambe community in the Garu�Tempani district in the Upper East region.
The two men, all Mamprusis, were singled out, according to an eyewitness who was also on board the truck, and dragged to the front of the vehicle where they were shot by the gunmen after being identified in an incident believed to be an overflow of the ethnic disturbance in the Bawku Municipality.
Narrating the story to Daily Guide, the eyewitness said the truck they were travelling with left Bawku very early in the morning with another which was carrying goods and heading towards Gushiegu in the Northern region through the Garu-Tempani district.
Upon reaching the Tambe community, the truck slowed down to descend a slop which led to the Tambe Bridge. As it got to the base of the slop, the four gun men, three with masks and one without, appeared on two unregistered motorbikes and fired warning shots to scare the passengers.
According to the eyewitness, they initially thought it was an armed robbery attack when the gun men started demanding their monies and phones and other belongings, after which they separated them on ethnic lines. �At this time, I started wondering what was going on, and my fear that it could be an ethnic attack was confirmed when Abdulai Suragu, a former �bo-oley boy� (loading boy) at the Bawku lorry station and Haruna Issaka, were pulled out and dragged with force to the front of the truck and shot. Abdulai was shot in the chest and Haruna in the shoulder.�
The eyewitness said at a point, when Abdulai Suragu was shot and fell, the women in the truck started wailing which attracted attention from the nearby communities. �This could have been the reason why they did not have time to gauge Haruna very well before shooting him,� he stated. The two unregistered motorbikes were however left at the scene by the gunmen who took to their heels with the belongings of the passengers when they realized some help had started coming in.
A relative of the dead man confirmed that Abdulai Suragu was indeed a loading boy at the Bawku station and that on the day he was killed, he was on his way to settle in Gushiegu in the Northern region to look for a job there. �He was a hard working man and was loved by many people in Bawku Township. I don�t think he was involved in the killings in the area. He could not be a killer,� the relative stressed.
The Police in Bawku however confirmed the incident and said investigations have started, adding they would do all they can to arrest the culprits or get a clue that could lead to their arrest.
The Member of Parliament for Bawku Central, Adamu Dramani Sakande, in a telephone interview with Daily Guide, described the incident as awful and shouldn�t have happened at this time, especially as the whole of January had been peaceful and violence-free in the Bawku Municipality.
�I am told it did not take place in the Bawku Municipality, but I think shooting people from the area creates room for people in the area to be worried. I pray that the security agencies will get the perpetrators and ensure that they are prosecuted immediately to serve as deterrent to all other criminals.�
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