Death (31)
Veteran actor, Okpala, douses death rumours
ACE actor in the popular television series, The New Masquerade, Chief Chika Okpalla alias Zebrudaya, yesterday refuted rumours of his death, saying he is very much "alive and kicking."
Okpalla, in his usual comical manner, said in Enugu that he is still breathing "like the rock of Gibraltar."
The comedian disclosed he has been alarmed through over 400 telephone calls on the rumour of his death, which he said started making the rounds since Easter Day.
He joked: "But why should people call a dead Man? They should be calling my wife and not the supposed dead man."
Okpala was rumoured to have died along the Enugu-Abakaliki expressway in the communal strife between the Ezza and Ezillo communities in Ebonyi State.
But the veteran actor said: "People want me to live longer than I am now. How did the rumour even come about? It came to me as a surprise. Between Easter and now, I have received about 400 calls over the rumour. They should have been calling my wife instead of the dead man."
Suggesting the possible source of the rumour, Okpala recounted he had actually travelled to Abakaliki, using the Enugu-Abakaliki highway where he was trapped in the crossfire of the communal war while returning to Enugu from Abakaliki.
He said he actually ran into the Ezillo gunmen unaware that that there was a communal war going on but was saved by the police.
His words: "As I was returning to Enugu from Abakaliki, at Ezillo, I heard two gunshots behind me and I thought that the boys who previously snatched my car at my gate in Enugu had trailed me again.
"But when I got to Ezillo market, I saw a group of boys who had blocked the road carrying guns, machetes and clubs but I didn't know there was communal war there. I turned around but they had also blocked the other end leading back to Abakaliki..
"So I was trapped and the only option left for me was to drive into the Ezillo Police Station where I was told it was communal war. But three hours later, the road was cleared and I returned to Enugu. That was two months ago. As you can see, I am still alive."
BEIJING – A former medical worker allegedly stabbed to death eight young children and wounded five others Tuesday in a bloody rampage outside an elementary school in eastern China.
The attacker struck in the morning as students arrived for classes, mingling with parents at the school gates before suddenly pulling out his knife and slashing children, according to witnesses interviewed on local television.
In the aftermath, doctors treated small children and bodies lay covered in bloody sheets after the attack at Nanping City Experimental Elementary School in Fujian province. Police officers manned a cordon around the school. Some comforted distraught parents..
China has witnessed a series of school attacks in recent years, most blamed on people with personal grudges or suffering from mental illness, leading to calls for improved security.
The rampage in Nanping was finally stopped by passers-by and school security guards and the attacker was arrested, the reports said. The suspect was identified as Zheng Minsheng, 41.
Zheng worked as a senior nurse in a community clinic before resigning last June, the official Xinhua News Agency said, citing Huang Zhongping, spokesman for the Nanping city public security bureau.
Zheng was known to have a history of mental illness, said a man surnamed Wu in the Nanping city government office, who would not give his full name as is common among Chinese officials.
An unidentified former co-worker interviewed on Fujian television said Zheng was "difficult to get along with."
Eight children were killed, and five were being treated at a hospital, Wu said. Six died at the scene, which was smeared with blood from the sidewalk to the floor of an inner reception room.
The victims' ages were not immediately known, but Chinese elementary schools typically have students ages 6 to 12.
The school was closed and students were sent home for the day. Counseling will be provided for students when classes resume Wednesday, Xinhua said.
Recent school attacks include a July 2007 assault in which a mentally ill man wielding a wrench wounded 18 children and a teacher in a kindergarten in southern China before fleeing on a motorcycle and trying to stab himself to death.
In June the same year, a man slashed four students, wounding one seriously, in a high school in the southeastern city of Fuzhou, while elsewhere, police shot dead a suspected mentally ill man who threatened to blow up a school in southern China with dynamite.
China's worst such incident in March 2001 destroyed a schoolhouse and killed at least 42 people, most of them children. Officials blamed a mentally ill man who charged into the school in Jiangxi province with a bag full of dynamite. Parents disputed that, claiming their children had been forced to make fireworks at the school.
The passengers, comprising journalists, officials of the National Emergency Management Agency as well as other agencies responsible for rescue operations in the country, ironically, were taking part in a simulated exercise to demonstrate the responsiveness of the relevant agencies to emergency situations.
Although no death was recorded from the incident, 10 of the passengers on board the flight sustained injuries, eyewitnesses who emerged from the crash said
Mr. Onyebuchi Ezigbo, the THISDAY Abuja Bureau correspondent, who emerged from the crash unscathed but traumatized, confirmed that only one of the passengers sustained a fracture to his hand and was immediately rushed to Teme Clinic, Port Harcourt for medical attention.
The fuselage of the Air Force plane, he said, was damaged beyond recognition and was left inside the bush where it skidded to a halt in the mud.
The passengers, most of them officials of the Nigerian Air Force, Federal Fire Service, N.igerian Police Force, National Security and Civil Defence Corps, Federal Road Safety Commission and journalists were flown to Port Harcourt from Abuja aboard an Air Force Plane 950 of the G888 series.
Ezigbo explained that the plane landed safely but instead of decelerating a few seconds after hitting the tarmac, it kept accelerating at terrific speed until it overshot the runway.
Ezigbo and other passengers were thankful that the plane did not burst into flames, disclosing that the fire fighters at the airport responded promptly to the accident.
The Port Harcourt airport, located in the Omagwa community, some 30 kilometres away from the city, was immediately closed to traffic.
An Arik Airline aircraft from Abuja that wanted to land was turned back midair, however another Arik aircraft a few hours later was given clearance to land and take off from the airport.
Only last month, an Augusta reconnaissance helicopter belonging to the Ni.gerian Navy crashed at Isiokpo in Ikwerre Local Government, Rivers State, killing all the occupants.
NEMA’s director, Search and Rescue Operations, Air Commodore Yomi Bankole who later addressed the press at the airport said the exercise was meant to be a simulated one as they set out hoping to take steps to move from the textbook approach by getting some practical experience before the unfortunate incident occurred yesterday.
“It was an unfortunate incident. A plane we used veered off the runway,” he said, but promptly refused to speculate on the cause of the accident.
“In the aviation industry, we do not run into hasty conclusions until after investigations,” but he assured that a team of investigators from the Air Force has already taken over investigations and at the appropriate time the Air Force would provide insight into what caused the incident.
The director general of NEMA, Alhaji Audu Bida who was billed to be in Port Harcourt but had to go to Kano due to a fire incident in the northern city, when called on the phone said, “it is a sad event but we are only happy that no one lost his life.
“This is why we should all be very proactive. Incidents like this can never be predicted but it is always good that the country prepares very well to handle them whenever they occur.”
According to him, it was due to events like this that prompted NEMA into planning the exercise which was interrupted by the near mishap and led to the cancellation of the exercise. He promised that NEMA would review the entire incident and plug the loop holes.
Senate Committee chairman on NEMA and other search and rescue agencies, Senator Smart Adeyemi who was at the airport after the accident said the incident has “exposed how unprepared we are given the equipment on the ground.
“It is unbecoming that we have only fire fighting vehicles in the airport. Our only luck was that the plane did not burst into flames, otherwise, the equipment on the ground would not have contained the disaster.”
All 47 civilian passengers flew back to Abuja yesterday on board a 6.30pm Arik Airways flight, while the five-man Air Force crew was flown aboard a helicopter to the military hospital at the Air Force base, Port Harcourt.
