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The death toll in the factional clashes that engulfed Bimbilla in the Northern Region had appreciated to 12 as at press time last night.

Information gathered by DAILY GUIDE indicates that 20 persons are receiving treatment for various injuries after sustaining gunshot wounds.

Bimbilla is now a ghost town, according to reports, with frightened residents fleeing to the regional capital, Tamale.

Residents are living in fear against a possible reprisal after fresh shootings were heard Friday morning.

Bodies were strewn across the Nanumba town, with the Police Administration being stretched to its seams in a frantic bid to restore law and order in the restive district capital.

Some of the casualties are kids whose mutilated bodies were picked from bushes.

The Police Administration has sent in reinforcements from Accra to support those already on the ground.

The military units in Tamale have also moved in to play the much-needed supporting role in a town which appears to have defied a medley of interventions so far to restore order.

The Police’s recently created unit, the Anti-Terrorist Squad, has been dispatched to the place to augment the number of security personnel deployed as is the Formed Police Unit (FPU).

According to the Northern Regional Police Spokesman, ASP Ebenezer Tetteh, two bodies were discovered in the bush yesterday morning.

By evening the death toll had risen to 12, and speculations are that more bodies may be discovered.

Apprehensive families are still searching for their missing relatives.

The Police are holding nine suspects for questioning, one of them the Registrar of the Nanumba Traditional Council, over the clashes in the skirmish-prone district capital.

Following the challenges posed by the skirmishes, the Interior Ministry has ordered a review of the curfew already in place from 4:00pm to 6:00am.

The latest clash was occasioned by the refusal of some butchers to send meat to the regent of the town as a mark of allegiance, which is an age-long convention.

A faction of the butchers, which does not recognise the regent, declined to carry out the convention – a refusal which degenerated into the situation the town now finds itself in.

The Regent of Nanum or Bimbilla, Nyeligolilana Yakubu Dawuni, in reaction, barred butchers in the town from going to the abattoir, but this directive was flouted by his adversaries.

Bimbilla has been engulfed in a long-drawn chieftaincy dispute which resulted in the murder of a traditional ruler, Naa Dasana Abdulai Andani, last year.

It is a pain which has lingered on among a section of the indigenes of the town with the temptation to revenge.

As it is characteristic with clashes in this part of the country, a number of houses were torched.

Schools have been abandoned and commercial activities stalled; and the situation is expected to aggravate with the reviewed curfew hours.