According to Amnesty International: "A CELEBRATION TERMINATED: FIVE PROTESTERS KILLED AND 20 INJURED IN ONITSHA - On 17 December 2015, soldiers of the 302 Artillery Regiment based in Onitsha killed five and injured at least 20 people, at Head Bridge, Onitsha. Amnesty International interviewed 15 people, including 11 people who witnessed the shooting, two witnesses who went to the hospitals to document the number of dead and injured and two relatives of the deceased. This protest started spontaneously as IPOB supporters came out to celebrate when a Federal High Court in Abuja granted bail to Nnamdi Kanu. They marched to the statue of Biafran leader Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu on Head Bridge. According to a human rights defender who was monitoring the assembly, there were around 300 people in this march. He said: “They were largely peaceful, singing, dancing and jubilating in the street. They occupied one side of the road and allowed cars to use the other side.” All witnesses told Amnesty International that early in the afternoon soldiers from 302 Artillery Regiment, who were guarding the bridge, stopped them and 25-year-old Mathew Kanu stepped forward to explain their intentions. He was beaten by solders and shot. The military said they reacted in self-defence, but all witnesses told Amnesty International that none of the protesters were armed. Chimanda Okoro (not his real name), a 25-year-old civil servant and IPOB member, told Amnesty International what happened when they were stopped at Head Bridge: “A soldier stopped us and asked us to go back. We just stood there. Our coordinator moved forward to explain to the soldier. But the officer hit him with a stick and he fell down. On getting up the soldier gave the signal to his men and they started shooting at us. We started running away. They were shooting indiscriminately. Some people who were not part of us [bystanders] were shot.” One of the IPOB coordinators told Amnesty International that Mathew Kanu and two others were killed on the spot. Chimso Anyanwu (not his real name), a 30-year-old contractor and IPOB member, told Amnesty International that he was in the second row of protesters. “Almost everyone on the first row had been hit. I saw many people falling down ... Bullets were raining everywhere in the market and people were running away.” All people interviewed for this incident confirmed that Mathew Kanu tried to talk to the soldiers and a soldier beat him. He was then shot. Witnesses also told Amnesty international that they saw the soldiers taking away the bodies of dead protesters. A hospital source told Amnesty International that the military brought three corpses. Their bodies were released to relatives in March 2016. According to Amnesty International’s research, the government has not carried out an independent investigation into this incident." ^[+]