A midnight shooting in the Bawku West District has left one person dead in what the police have described as robbery attack.
Police report says a gang of armed robbers appeared from nowhere around 2:00am Tuesday in the hilly district capital, Zebilla, and opened fire at a 207 bus which was taking passengers from Bolgatanga towards Bawku.
The bullets hit one of the passengers, a Burkinabe (who died later at the hospital) as the rest of the travelers screamed for rescue.
“An identity card found on the victim shows that he is a Burkinabe, aged 45 years. His body is in the morgue. It happened around one of the diverged routes along the main road under construction. An amount of money was found on the victim- Ghana money. We still suspect it’s something like a robbery,” the Bawku Divisional Police Commander, Chief Superintendent Yao Tettegah, told Starr News Tuesday.
Attacked bus was unescorted
The armed attack came as the bus was wheeling without a police escort on a road mostly walled by dense forests on either side.
Checks by Starr News indicate that police no longer escort night travelers, as before, on that 84-kilometre road. The escort came to a sudden halt after the municipal and district assemblies along that stretch, for reasons yet unknown, ceased the provision of fuel support for police escort.
“The bus travelled without escort. The attackers ran away after firing. They did not make away with anything. The reasons behind their action is what we are investigating. And we are now trying to ensure that vehicles do not move individually. They should move in groups whilst we provide escort,” Chief Superintendent Tettegah stated.
Bolga-Bawku Road construction makes progress
Insecurity, for decades, has been closely tied to the horrifying surface of the Bolgatanga-Bawku-Pulmakon Road.
Engineers working on the stretch told Starr News Tuesday the first section of the construction (between the White Volta and the beginning of Bazua Town) had been done and that road users had been brought back to that portion.
“A few days back, we moved the public back to the completed section of it. We need the public to use the completed road for some time before we put road line marking on it. We haven’t done any demolition yet.
“A few people were talked to in Bazua and they have started removing their roofing sheets- particularly those who are close to the road. The next section of the construction will begin from the end of Bazua Town to where the CEPS post in the forested area (the Binduri Barrier) used to be,” Ing. Francis Hammond, the Chief Resident Engineer for the project, said.
