Two more people were killed in two separate attacks in Masaka last night, despite intensified security presence in the area. The attacks occurred in Kitenga Cell, along the Nyendo-Villa Maria road in Nyendo Mukungwe division in Masaka and in Kingo Sub-county of Lwengo district respectively.
The deceased are identified as Maria Nakato, 78, a resident of Kitenga in Masaka and Henry Kiremba, 81, a retired medical officer from Kyoko village, Kingo sub-county in Lwengo district. The killers allegedly broke into the houses of the victims and stabbed them with blunt objects.
Godfrey Ssenvuma, a neighbour to the late Nakato narrates that the killers first locked him inside his house to prevent him from responding to the alarm the deceased made as she was attacked.
He says that the deceased was alone in the house, and by the time he called for rescue, the attackers had already accomplished their mission and dumped her body in a banana plantation.
Andrew Kiggwe, the Chairperson on Kitenga Cell and a relative to the deceased suspects that the killing has a connection to a land dispute which the deceased was mediating among residents in the area. Kiggwe says the deceased had been staying with her granddaughter who had however gone to attend to her business chores away from home at the time of the incident.
In Lwengo district, the killers went away with a mobile phone of the victim, which they used to call his daughter in Sweden, and informed her that they had murdered her father.
Amon Kamoga, a relative to the deceased told police that he received a phone call from Rosemary Birabwa, asking him to check on their father and indeed he found his body lying in his house which had been broken into.
The Greater Masaka Regional Police Spokesperson Muhammad Nsubuga says that they have kicked off investigations about the incidents, but cautions the public against leaving elderly persons in homes which make them more vulnerable.
He adds that they have arrested one suspect in relation to the latest incident that occurred in Kitenga Cell, bringing the total number of those arrested to 39.
The latest incidents bring to 27 the number of people who have been killed under suspicious circumstances in space of five weeks in the Masaka sub-region.
