The Interior Minister, Ambrose Dery and Inspector General of Police (IGP), David Asante-Apeatu will be visiting Bimbilla where a protracted intra-ethnic chieftaincy violence killed many and uprooted dozens from their homes.
Their visit, according to the Northern Region Police Public Relations Officer (PRO), ASP Ebenezer Tetteh will be “a fact-finding mission and also to [enable them] see at first hand the destruction that has occasioned [since] the conflict.”
A refugee situation has been created in Yendi, a second largest but highly polarized city, in the Northern region after a six-hour heavy fighting between chieftaincy factions in Bimbila, Nanumba North district capital left 11 persons dead.
At least 30 families fleeing the grinding chieftaincy unrest to Saboba and Chereponi entered Yendi waiting for other evacuees to proceed.
Residents in villages near Bimbila saw scores of people mostly women and children escaping the fighting by road on tricycles.
Meanwhile, a District Court in Tamale, has granted bail to some 17 suspects arrested in the chieftaincy clashes in Bimbilla after a Circuit Court judge earlier swerved the case.
Police initially arrested 21 suspects but 17 persons were re-arrested by the Tamale police after screening and were formally charged for breaching curfew in a suit filed at the Circuit Court.
Prosecutors sent the suspects to the court but the judge failed to turn up forcing a change of court.
Court authorities did not give details for the judge’s absence and prosecutors declined to speak on the issue.
At the district court, His lordship Anthony Aidoo Aduku sat on the case and after a short legal battle between lawyer for the accused and prosecutors bail was granted to the defenders who had pleaded not guilty.
It was with a surety of ¢1,000.
