Robbers, cops shootout kills 6
2008-02-11 11:53
Lagos - Six people, including three policemen, were killed in a gun battle with robbers in Nigeria's commercial city at the weekend, said police on Monday.
"We lost three officers while we killed three armed robbers during the shootout at Onikan on Sunday," said a senior police officer.
He said police chased the robbers from Ikeja, where they had snatched a car, some 15km to Onikan, where the shooting broke out.
"We got them at Onikan and there was a shootout," he added. He said a wounded robber was arrested and was being questioned.
There had been a recent upsurge in robberies in and around Lagos, a metropolis of nine million inhabitants. Several policemen and bystanders had been killed by the bandits who used sophisticated weapons in their operations.
The Nigerian police claimed they killed 785 robbers and lost 62 officers in gunbattles in the last quarter of 2007.