28 Nigerian soldiers of 72 Battalion killed by Boko Haram, others

The Commanding Officer, 72 Special Forces Battalion, Makurdi, Timothy Lagbaja, has said that the battalion lost 28 soldiers to insurgency in the North-East and in Benue.

Mr. Lagbaja, a colonel, told newsmen in Makurdi on Wednesday that between 2012 and 2015, the battalion lost four officers and eight soldiers to the Tiv/Fulani and Agatu crises in Benue.

He said the remaining 16 were lost to insurgency in the North-East, while many others who sustained degrees of injuries were either flown abroad or treated in the country.

The commander said the battalion alone had deployed about 500 soldiers to serve in the special security outfit `operation Zenda’ to maintain internal security in the state.

According to him, the effort is paying off as weapons hitherto in the hands of wrong people have been recovered.

He said that the high criminality in the state had been reduced to “few isolated cases of killings’’.