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About 35 buildings located on encroached land of the Ghana Atomic Energy Commission (GAEC) at Kwabenya in Accra were demolished on Saturday in an operation supervised jointly by the police and military. As early as 7 a.m, the demolition team equipped with heavy-duty earthmoving machinery started pulling down the buildings which were at various stages of development. The exercise was extended to another stretch of land of the GAEC adjacent to the Graduate School of Allied Sciences and behind the Nuclear Reactor building. Briefing the Times newspaper, Lt Col. James Hagan, Deputy Director, Army Operations, said the exercise followed a notice to the encroachers by the Minister of Lands and Natural Resources to vacate the land. He said during a recent visit by the Minister, Alhaji Collins Dauda to the GAEC, he saw that most of the government acquired lands for which compensation had been paid to the owners had been extensively encroached on. �Lt. Col. Hagan identified some of the encroached lands as Owabi and Barakese dam areas in Kumasi, Mile II cemetery. Kwabenya Land fill site, Nungua Farms and Achimota School, all in Accra. He said after the Ministers tour in May this year, a security sub-committee on Lands and Natural Resources was constituted to halt the indiscriminate encroachment of lands by evicting the culprits. Lt.-Col Hagan said to give a human face to the exercise, the government decided to release to the various families who owned the lands, 30 per cent of the acquired lands. In July, this year, the team toured the places and served notices on the buildings affected. Lt.-Col. Hagan said the exercise, needed to be done in the public interest as well as for the safety of the encroachers, themselves. Explaining, he said, the foresight of Dr Kwame Nkrumah in siting the Nuclear Reactor from human settlement cannot be lost on Ghanaians today, citing �the India and Russian nuclear disasters as the best examples for Ghana�. Speaking to the Times newspaper, some of the people whose building were affected said their property fell within the 30 per cent demarcation range granted the Namlorkor Family of Korle We in Gbese. They said since the notification of the intended demolition, they had several meetings with the family and GAEC officials and they were assured that their buildings fall within the 30 per cent boundary. They claimed that they acquired the land through due process and had title deeds issued by the Lands Commission.