The Cross River State Police Command yesterday, acting on reliable intelligence, arrested eight men and a female, suspected to be the brains behind an Improvised Explosives Device, IED/gun manufacturing factory in Osomba, a sleepy little community in Akamkpa LGA, CRS.
It also yeilded the arrest of notorious armed robbery suspect, Orok Etim a.k.a “Gowon”, serially wanted by the police and is now in police custody.
Police sources in Calabar informed www.calitown.com that the covert operation, ordered by the State Commissioner of Police, CP Gyogon Grimah, which led to the busting of the factory and lasting a little above four hours, recorded a major breakthrough as it uncovered remote controlled Improvised Explosives Devices (IEDs), detonators, an abundance of explosive devices, several automatic weapons, assault rifles and dozens of locally made double barrel guns and pistols.
Police Public Relations Officer, CR Command, Irene Ugbo, a Superintendent of Police, who addressed journalists after the suspects were paraded, gave a breakdown of items physically recovered from the suspects.
“Our men recovered 90M high explosives: 8 pieces, 60M explosives: 6 pieces, 10 detonator pieces 15 pieces of Indicators, 10 pieces of remote devices as well as 10 pieces of battery as power sources.”
“We also recovered two G3 automatic machine gun pieces, three pump actions guns, a MAC 4, five pieces of automatic rifles, five locally fabricated pistols, a LAR riffle, fabricated revolvers, a locally made Beretta pistol, 650 rounds of 7.6×51 LAR ammunition, 29 rounds of 7.62×39 AK-47 ammunition plus 70 pieces of cartridges amongst others.”