Protesters shot dead in Lagos

Deadly violence comes hours after the announcement of curfew

Nigeria’s security forces have reportedly shot dead demonstrators protesting against police brutality in Lagos, according to several witnesses, as authorities imposed a curfew and promised an investigation
A witness told the BBC he had counted about 20 bodies and at least 50 injured after soldiers opened fire. Amnesty International said it had obtained credible reports of deaths.
The protests, organized under the #EndSARS hastag, began with calls to scrap a notorious police unit, the Special Anti- Robbery Squad (SARS), which has long been accused of extortion, torture and extrajudicial killings.After days of widespread demonstrations, the authorities announced SARS would be disbanded, ordering all personnel to report to the police headquarters in Abuja for debriefing and psychological and medical examinations.

Officials said SARS would be replaced by a Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) team. The announcements have not satisfied the protesters, who see the changes as nothing but a renaming exercise.
The intervention comes after Monday protests where thousands of demonstrators brought swaths of the commercial capital to standstill, mounting the biggest demonstration in a two week campaign against police brutality. A city police station was set on fire on Tuesday morning, leading the national police chief to order the deployment of anti-riot police to quell “increasing attacks including acts of arson and malicious damage.

Hundreds of people were at the site at the time of the shooting, which witnesses said took place around 7pm local time.“They started firing ammunition towards the crowd. They were firing into the crowd. I saw the bullet hit one or two persons,” said Alfred Ononugbo, a security officer.Witnesses stated that pickup trucks arrived shortly after nightfall and soldiers began to fire tear gas and then bullets into the crowd. It wasn’t immediately clear how many people have shot, but they saw several bodies on the road. Videos posted on social media showed screaming protestors surrounding bloodied corpses, visible through a haze of yellow tear-gas smoke.
In a tweet, Amnesty International Nigeria said it had “received credible but disturbing evidence of excessive use of force occasioning deaths of protestors at Lekki toll gate in Lagos”, adding that it was investigating “the killings”.

Lagos state Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu has said that criminals have hijacked the protests.