A group of armed bandits suspected to have come from Panyijar County in Unity State last week beheaded two elderly men in Lakes State’s Yirol East County, the police confirmed.
Maj. Elijah Mabor Makuac, the police spokesperson in Lakes State to Radio Tamazuj that the assailants also raided an unspecified number of cattle during last Thursday’s morning raid on Mathiang village in Yirol East County.
“Our security situation in Lakes State has been quite calm and normal except for the incident in Yirol East County. On Thursday 9 May, armed youth from Panyijiar County in Unity State came and captured six people, two were mostly elderly and four were children, at a place called Mathiang village and they raided cattle,” he said. “These criminals beheaded the two elderly people and abducted their children who they later released. The released children arrived and informed people in the county. Security forces spent the whole day and night trailing the attackers until this morning but they came back and reported that they failed to trace the criminals.”
“The criminals went back to Panyijiar County and this is the security situation currently in Nyang town,” Maj. Mabor added.
He said the two elderly men were slaughtered with knives.
“The dead bodies of the elderly men were found in that area where they were their heads were cut off. They were abducted in the grazing field while looking after their cattle in the morning,” Mabor said. “They took them away with cattle and later on they killed the two people and continued with these small kids until later on when they released them. These children are the ones who gave this information to the authorities in Yirol East.”
He urged the people of Yirol to be very vigilant when releasing their cattle for grazing to avoid such incidents.
On his part, Yirol East County Commissioner Manyang Luka confirmed the incident and said security forces are still pursuing the armed youth to recover the raided cattle.
Meanw, Johnson Ater, a resident of Mathiang village in Adior Payam, Yirol East County, said that within just one week, the attackers raided cattle, injured a police officer, and abducted four women in Adior Payam.
“Every day, even today (Thursday), some cattle in Tit-agau Payam were raided,” he lamented. “This is the fifth tragic incident in which cattle have been raided, women and children abducted and elderly people killed in Yirol East County by the armed youth from the neighboring Panyijar County.”