A day after militants attacked a Marine Police checkpoint in Bayelsa and killed four soldiers and four policemen; the Joint Task Force has engaged local divers to search for the corpses of the missing officers and men.
This is coming on the heels of the claim by the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) that it carried out the dawn raid, which claimed the lives of the the Commander of the Brass Unit of the JTF and three others along the Brass-Ogbia waterways of Bayelsa State.??????????????????????????????????????????????
Jomo Gbomo, spokesman for MEND, did not however give reasons for the attack, but confirmed further that his men were in contact with the abductors of three expatriates who were taken off a Dutch-flagged ship, “MV Breeze Clipper” off the coast of Port Harcourt last Tuesday.
The militant group gave the names of the abductees as, Captain Pikus Viktor,? Melnikov Slava and Frederick Villamor.
Gbomo said that the kidnappers of the expatriates were willing to hand them over to one of its camp in Rivers State, since they were not captured on a ship that has any dealing with the Nigerian oil industry.
It was learnt that the master and chief engineer of the ship are Russians, while the crew man is a Philippine.
MEND threatened to use rockets and set ablaze any Nigerian oil industry vessel that attempts to frustrate its fighters on getting on board any of the ships on the high seas.???????????????????????????????????
The Media Coordinator of the JTF, Lt. Col. Timothy Antigha, yesterday confirmed that the authorities had engaged Naval and local divers to search for the missing officers and men of the military outfit.????????
“The JTF has declared missing the four personnel reportedly attacked by the gunmen missing and has engaged local divers to search for their corpses, while we have deployed our men to apprehend the criminals who carried out the attack,” Antigha said.
The bodies of four policemen, who died in the attack, were recovered by the state police command last Thursday; but those of the soldiers were yet to be found.
Following the killing of the military and police personnel, the JTF has deployed many gunboats along the Nembe and Brass waterways in a bid to apprehend the perpetrators of the crime.
Reacting to the development, the Senior Special Assistant to the Governor on Media and Public Affairs, Mr. Daniel Iworiso-Markson, condemned the attack and warned that the state government would not tolerate any form of criminality in its domain.