Sewing machines, fabrics, among other properties were made away with.

Silence broke out in New Bell, a neighbourhood that is graduating from its slum nature. Armed robbers over the week-end broke into one of many fashion design workshops around Central Bar. The wave of terror grew high at about midnight Saturday as they fired into the air while other gang members ransacked and looted a workshop in the area.

The few people who still loitered around were forced to stay silence, some forced to lie prostrate and at gunpoint until a suitable wave of relief as the men carted away with the stolen properties, which consists of new machines for hemming, zigzagging, and sewing as well as new fabrics and loins worth more than a million Francs.

Neighbours and late night drinkers said immediately they heard the sound of gun shots, it did not sound strange and uncommon to them. “But we simply rushed to stop our television and musical sets and retrenched into hiding and stopped making any movements because we are very abreast with the wave of killings by armed robbers here,” a bartender explained.

An elder of the neighbourhood said there was no need to alert security forces, for armed robbery is a thing they live with everyday. The opening up of New Bell to many seemed a partial solution to the very many aspects of insecurity, but the current incident proved that banditry, and particularly armed banditry, is still an issue to be adequately addressed.