The Gambian military says it is investigating a shooting incident involving one of its personnel at a checkpoint in former president Yahya Jammeh’s home village of Kanilai.
A soldier manning a checkpoint in the village, 118km south of the capital Banjul on Sunday shot and wounded former Lance Corporal Ismaila Tamba.
The victim had allegedly refused to stop for a routine search of his commercial vehicle at the army checkpoint, causing the unnamed soldier to open fire, apparently to disable one of its tires.
Tamba was reportedly the only one on the vehicle at the time of the incident.
Speaking to journalists on Wednesday, a spokesman of the Gambian Armed Forces while declining to name the shooter, disclosed that he was in the custody of the military police who are investigating the circumstances attending to the incident.
The military said the full weight of the law would be brought to bear on parties found to be culpable over the incident.
Meanwhile, Tamba a native of Kanilai is said to be recuperating at the Edward Francis Small Teaching Hospital in Banjul to where he was transferred from a rural medical facility.
Tamba voluntarily retired from the military last year and has been working as a driver for a 20-seater van plying Kanilai, one of the many strongholds of exiled president Jammeh in Gambia’s Foni region.
It was the scene of unrest last year when a Jammeh supporter was shot dead ostensibly by Ecowas peacekeeping forces deployed in the village during a demonstration against a curfew in the area which is a few kilometres from the border with Senegal’s restive southern province of Casamance.
WN/as/APA