The Committee to Protect Journalists urged Ghanaian authorities Thursday to investigate the attack on five journalists who covered the elections in the southern Ashanti Region.

The attack occurred at the Ashanti Regional Coordinating Council while the journalists were covering electoral officers counting votes. It was reportedly triggered by the defeat of National Democratic Congress (NDC) candidate Yaw Owusu Obimpeh, and forced the electoral commission to suspend the process. The journalists reported that they were covering the vote-counting process when at least 14 unidentified men attacked electoral officials, destroyed ballot papers, assaulted the reporters by hitting and slapping them, confiscated their phones, and deleted their footage. The GhanaWeb’s Asahnti Regional Correspondent, Gideon Nana Peprah, who was also attacked, recounted his harrowing experience:

Built men from nowhere just stormed the place. They stormed the grounds where the electoral officers were doing the sorting and counting. Suddenly, they started scattering everything — the ballots, the prepared ballot papers, and the tally sheets. Then, at some point, they even started attacking themselves, which left us confused as to what was happening

Following this incident, the Ghana Police Service issued a statement that they were tracking the “thugs” that disrupted the election and committed violence against the journalists. According to the public statement, the police were reviewing all available footage to identify and arrest the perpetrators.

Angela Quintal, the head of CPJ’s Africa program in New York, stated that journalists’ critical democratic role in reporting elections is too often jeopardized with impunity in Ghana. She further said that “Ghanaian authorities must find out who was behind the assault on five journalists and electoral officers in Ashanti Region and ensure those responsible are ultimately held to account.”