A brave soldier paid the supreme price when troops of Operation Sahel Sanity battled bandits, killing three of them and rescuing three nursing mothers along with their infants in Katsina State.
The incident occurred last Thursday when troops, responding to a distress call about the activities of bandits at Diskuru village in Faskari Local Government Area of the state, engaged the criminals in a gun battle, a statement by the military said on Sunday.
Bandits had attacked the village around 5:30 am on motorcycles, killing several persons in the village.
The troops, however, repelled the attack, killing three of the bandits and forcing the others to flee with many of them believed to have sustained various degrees of gunshot wounds, the statement by the Acting Director of Defence Media Operations, Brigadier General Bernard Onyeuko said.
When contacted by phone, the Public Relations Officer of the Police Command in Katsina, SP Isah Gambo, told Newsmen that 17 people were killed by the bandits in all. Four of them were members of the vigilante group and 12 were members of the village. According to him, the remote nature of the village had an impact on the response to the attack, which he said was reprisal.