The Nigerian Army has denied the accounts of the church killings in Anambra State as reported by News Express and promised to provide more details.

Acting Director of Army Public Relations, Colonel Sani Kukasheka Usman, said in a WhatsApp message to News Express: “Information not correct. In fact, it was some MASSOB/IPOB elements that attacked troops and other security agencies while they were on patrol. We will certainly give you further details.”

The Army Spokesman responded after News Express, as a follow-up to the story it broke about the invasion, this morning by troops, of a Catholic Church in Nkpor, near Onitsha, Anambra State, quoted a source as claiming that the invasion started past midnight and that some of the members of the Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB) and the Indigenous Peoples of Biafra (IPOB), who gathered to commemorate the declaration of the Republic of Biafra by the late Col. Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu on May 30, 1967, were shot and killed in their sleep.

According to the source, “The event is billed to start at 12 noon but from around 1am the joint security task force locally known as Obiano Police invaded the church where many of the MASSOB and IPOB members who arrived in advance for the ceremony were sleeping and started shooting. At least 10 people have been reported killed and a lot of people injured.”

The Nigerian military is yet to comment on the incident.