Barely two weeks after a Benue Links bus was ambushed on the Makurdi-Naka road in Benue, another bus was also ambushed in the late hours of Tuesday on the same route and at the same spot.
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One of the passengers aboard the ambushed bus Francis Ugbede spoke with The Guardian in hushed tones before his phone was switched off.

Ugbede told The Guardian that the vehicle he was travelling in had ran into an ambush ‘just after where they sell roasted yams’. He said that 3 passengers were hurriedly abducted before soldiers could respond to the distress calls and rescue the remaining passengers. He said that this time around, it was not a Benue Links bus.

It would be recalled that in the Benue Links bus attacked earlier, one person was killed and all remaining passengers abducted. As at the time of filing this report, The Guardian gathered that none has been released.

Meanwhile, the security situation in Benue State is taking a plunge for the worse as bandits and suspected armed herdsmen continue to attack and kill defenceless farmers unchallenged.
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Apart from the vehicle that was ambushed on Tuesday , in the morning of the same day, a farmer at Goh village in Gwer West Local government council was attacked on his way to his farm and matcheted to death and his wife severely brutalised. The woman is receiving medical attention at an undisclosed medical facility at Naka, the council headquarters.

Similarly, on Monday three fishermen were killed by suspected armed herdsmen at Tse Hambe, in the same Gwer West local government council.

According to eye witness account, the group of fishermen were carrying out their trade when the attackers swooped on them without warning. Three of them were killed instantly while the remaining four escaped back to the village.

Just like at Goh, the bodies of the fishermen are yet to be recovered. An indigene of the area Andrew Adoka told The Guardian that the villagers were scared of venturing into the bush unarmed for fear of the attackers.
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Adoka said that in such an event, personnel of the Operation Whirlstroke, the army special task force stationed in the area are approached to lead the villagers into the bush to retrieve the bodies of their kinsmen.

The Police Public Relations Officer Benue State command, Superintendent of Police Catherine Anene told The Guardian that she was not yet officially briefed on the latest bus attack and the other killings in the state.

But on the efforts of the police to apprehend members of the Otukpo multiple bank robbery, She told The Guardian that although there has been no new arrest of the fleeing robbers after the four claimed by the police, however, she assured that the police has intensified the manhunt and were on top of the situation.
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