A 36-year-old carpenter in Bunkprugu in the Northern Region, James Jabik, has been allegedly killed by soldiers on peacekeeping Mission in the area for breaking the curfew imposed on the area as a result of violent clashes that claimed two lives.
The Director of Public Affairs of the Ghana Armed Forces, Colonel Aggrey Quarshie, said the deceased was shot during a struggle with the soldiers.
The military he said, went to the house to arrest the accused for breaking the curfew but the deceased person armed himself with a machete and threatened to kill the military men.
“The gentleman broke curfew. When the military tried to arrest him, he went into his house and came back with a cutlass and tried to take the soldiers weapon so in the struggle, the weapon went off and he died,” A brother to the deceased, Dickson Labik, however, told Joy News that armed military men surrounded the house in which the deceased was living, a situation that created fear and panic.
According to him, residents, including the deceased, hid in their rooms when they noticed that they had been surrounded.
“All of us went into hiding in our various rooms. His wife and children were in the room. When they came they entered and pulled the woman and children out and saw the man hiding among some sacks of maize. They dragged him out and shot him.”
Labik claimed the military, at gun point, forced the wife of the deceased to pull him out of the room into the yard.
“The woman had to comply because she was afraid,” he claimed, adding that the military men went away after they had conveyed the body of the deceased to the hospital.
The police said they had received conflicting reports of what happened from the deceased family and the military, and were investigating the matter.
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