Unclaimed corpses not DSS operatives —Officials

They were reacting to our report of yesterday which said seven bodies of slain DSS operatives were unclaimed at the mortuary at Dalhatu Araf Specialist Hospital (DASH) and would soon be given mass burial.
 At the moment, there are only three unclaimed corpses still in the mortuary. This is just as a DNA test conducted on them and seven parents of the slain DSS operatives proved negative.  
Seven of the 10 parents of slain DSS operatives are yet to get bodies of their sons. The three corpses in the mortuary were recovered from Alakyo after the fatal ambush on a convoy of security operatives on May 7, 2013. The police and the DSS said they lost 64, and 10 men respectively in the operation.
 Both agencies presented memoranda during a public hearing of a panel which blamed Ombatse, but Barrister Zachary Zamani Allumaga, a leader of the group, denied its involvement. Some political leaders of the ethnic group have gone to court to stop government’s implementation of the panel report and the government white paper which they alleged were cooked up to smear them and their tribe.
The panel was told that 46 bodies were recovered from the scene of the ambush, three of which were identified as DSS operatives and later handed over to their relatives. Others were identified and handed over to families of slain policemen, but three were unclaimed because they were mutilated and burned beyond recognition.  This led the state government to sponsor DNA tests on them, but the results proved negative, following which the state’s health commissioner, Dr. Emmanuel Akabe, disclosed recently that government would arrange a mass burial for them since no relatives had come to claim them.