GUARDIAN NG
The early Friday morning attack took place in the Ngor-Okpala area of Imo State, where the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) separatist group and its armed wing, the Eastern Security Network (ESN), are active.
Attacks blamed on IPOB have killed dozens of police officers in the last two years in Nigeria’s southeastern states, where the group agitates for a separate state for the ethnic Igbo people.
“Four police officers attached to Area Command Ngor-Okpala paid the supreme price having engaged unsuspecting IPOB and ESN militia dressed in black and red regalias in a shoot out,” Imo state police said in a statement.
“Stray bullet from the miscreants killed two civilians.”
IPOB has constantly denied being behind attacks on police, local government offices and electoral agency buildings.
Separatism is sensitive in Nigeria, where a declaration of an independent Biafra Republic by Igbo army officers in the southeast in 1967 triggered a three-year civil war that left more than one million dead.
