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Bama Police Unleash Terror On Maiduguri Hospital Over Lack Of Space For Dead Officers

Posted: May 10, 2013 - 

Gunshots fired at the radiology department

A doctor injured in the fracas

By SaharaReporters, New York

Sources at the University of Maiduguri Teaching Hospital (UMTH) told SaharaReporters that a contingent of police officers from the violence-ridden town of Bama created mayhem and terror in an armed attack of the hospital. “The police men launched an attack on the hospital because our doctors said there was no space to accept the dead bodies of police officers they brought,” one UMTH doctor told our correspondent.
In the last few days, the police in Bama, a nearby town to the Borno State capital of Maiduguri, lost close to 100 officers in gun battles with members of a militant Islamist sect. Our sources said trouble started when medical officials at UMTH told police officers who accompanied the remains of their slain colleagues that the hospital’s morgue was full and could take no more corpses.
Our sources said the police became irate and fired shots at the hospital, causing some damage to the Radiology Department and injuring at least one doctor.
A spokesman of the Joint Military Task Force, which has been engaged in a series of gruesome encounters with Boko Haram militants, confirmed the incident to SaharaReporters. He said the task force had intervened to bring the situation at the besieged hospital under control.
Eyewitnesses provided photos showing the damage caused by the police in the attack on the University of Maiduguri Teaching Hospital, Maiduguri on Thursday, May 9, 2013.
“[The police] arrived with bodies of their men killed by Boko Haram hoping to deposit them at the hospital mortuary. But our doctors on duty refused to accept the bodies because we do not have space anymore,” a hospital source stated. He and others then disclosed that the police then took aim at the hospital’s Radiology Department, damaging doors and injuring a doctor.
Another source indicated that the police were frustrated because the biggest hospital in the blood-soaked town of Bama had also run out of space to take in more corpses. The town of Bama has been the scene of a series of bloody battles between members of the dreaded extremist group, Boko Haram, and police officers as well as members of the Joint Task Force. A few sources put the casualty figures at several hundred, many of them innocent civilians as well as police officers ambushed by Boko Haram militants.