ARMED ROBBERS ATTACK TRAVELLERS (BACK PAGE, AUGUST 31, 2010)

SCORES of travellers on the Wa-Tumu-Bolgatanga road were subjected to a traumatic ordeal by suspected armed robbers who ambushed six vehicles, including two Metro-Mass Transport (MMT) buses, and robbed the occupants of valuable items and money.
The dawn attack occurred at Nadakui near Tumu in the Sissala East District, where the robbers, numbering about six and said to be wielding AK 47 and G3 rifles and in police and military uniforms, seized the keys to the vehicles and asked all the passengers to alight.
They seized laptops, mobile phones, bags containing clothes and undisclosed sums of money at gunpoint after some of the passengers had received some slaps.
A victim of the robbery, Madam Mariga Musah, who was on a MMT bus from Wa to Bolgatanga, told the Daily Graphic that after starting from Wa at about 5 a.m. their bus got to a spot between Jeffisi in the Sissala West District and Tumu in the Sissala East District both in the Upper West Region at about 7:30 am.
She said upon reaching the spot their driver spotted a fleet of vehicles parked ahead of him and so he also slowed down.
She said a few minutes after their driver had halted they overheard voices commanding the driver and the passengers to raise up their hands only to see two men in Ghana Police uniforms armed with guns ordering everybody aboard the bus to surrender his or her money and mobile phones into a bag one of the robbers was holding.
She said the other robbers were by then taking care of the other passengers who had been held hostage and were already lying on the floor with their faces down.
She said after handing over their phones, money and other valuables to the robbers, they were also asked to come out from the bus to join those who were lying down.
Madam Mariga Musah, who is a teacher at the Nuriya Primary School in Wa, said while they lay down the robbers again came and searched them one after the other and took whatever they found on them.
She said the robbers, after the operation, packed their booty into a saloon car and a jeep with registration numbers GR 5526 X and GR 8850 X belonging to some of the victims and sped off.
She said when they were about to continue with their journey at about 10 a.m. after the robbers had left, they then met a team of police personnel from Tumu approaching while another came from a different direction.
She said the police were informed of the robbery and they pursued the robbers.
The Deputy Upper West Regional Police Commander, ACP Kofi Danso Adei Acheampong, confirmed the incident and said the police later saw the saloon car and the jeep abandoned at Kuntulo, also near Tumu, and towed the cars to the Tumu Police Station.
He said no arrests had been made so far but said the police were investigating.