Hundreds of passengers travelling from Kumasi towards Sunyani on Sunday night were gripped with fear when angry supporters of Bechem FC laid ambush at Bechem and attacked travellers on board vehicles passing through the area, after a football match. Bechem FC had played a 1-1 drawn game with Brong Ahafo (BA) Stars, who by the final scores, secured promotion to the Premier League. This development angered the supporters of Bechem FC who went on rampage. Many passengers in the process sustained various degrees of injury and were rushed to the Sunyani Regional Hospital, while several vehicles had their windscreens and window glasses smashed in the orgy of violence that trailed the outcome of the match. A curfew was imposed on the town by the Regional Security Council following the unruly behavior of the Bechem FC fans. A victim who was onboard a Metro Mass Transit bus from Kumasi to Sunyani that night told DAILY GUIDE that when the bus in which they were travelling got to the outskirts of Bechem, the security personnel asked them to stop, but after realizing that it was a passenger bus and not BA Stars supporters car, they were given the green light to go. Upon entering the Bechem Township, the angry supporters started throwing stones and other offensive objects from all corners into the bus and ended up smashing all the windscreens of the Metro Mass Transit bus. But for the timely intervention of security personnel, a saloon car would have been set on fire by the angry mob. According to the victim, there was total blackout in the town during the incident which made it impossible to identify the perpetrators. Following this development, travellers from Kumasi were forced to re-route via the Tepa-Acherensua-Ntotroso road before getting to Sunyani peacefully. The chief of the town, Nana Fosu Gyeabour Akoto II, however condemned the brutalities inflicted on the people by the military. When DAILY GUIDE visited Bechem yesterday, the government hospital was over-crowded with scores of wounded residents who had been assaulted by the military. Hospital officials explained that the situation was escalating as the wounded residents kept on arriving in their numbers and there were not enough beds at the emergency centre to accommodate them. A nurse told the paper that a pregnant woman, who was hit several times with the butt of a gun by the soldiers, could lose her baby and her chance of surviving was slim. Residents told DAILY GUIDE that they were not aware of the curfew starting from 6.00pm to 6.00am; and that some of them who were spotted by the soldiers on Monday morning around 8:00am were beaten mercilessly. A 19-year-old player of Bechem United FC, Collins Gyabaah, who spoke to DAILY GUIDE on his sick bed, said the soldiers spotted him at the Bechem-Tepa Junction, near the team’s camp while discussing the outcome of the Sunday match with his girlfriend on the phone. He said when the soldiers overheard him mention Bechem FC; they pounced on him, beating him ruthlessly. Meanwhile, some of the passengers have blamed the security personnel for doing little to provide security for them. A similar incident occurred last Wednesday May 12, 2010 when supporters of Ashgold were beaten by supporters of Berekum Arsenals at Nsoatre and Bechem, leaving some of them injured and hospitalized. Source: Daily Guide