Mozambique: Xtract Resources extends longstop date for Manica sale
File photo / Defence Minister of Mozambique, Salvador Mtumuke
Mozambique’s Defence Minister Salvador Mtumuke said on Tuesday in Maputo that attacks by Renamo’s armed wing signal the rejection of peace talks between the main opposition party and the government.
“One of the points [of the negotiations] is the cessation of hostilities,” Mtumuke told reporters on the sidelines of the donation by the US government of six motor vehicles and eight motorcycles to the Defence Forces of Mozambique (FADM).
For Mtumuke, it does not make sense that the Joint Commission of Mozambican government and the National Resistance (Renamo) delegations meets to negotiate while at the same time that the armed wing of the main opposition party carries out attacks.
“It is not moral to have a Joint Commission sit in a room while in the bush [Renamo is] killing people and assaulting health centres. It does not make any sense,” added Mtumuke, quoted by the public radio station Rádio Moçambique.
Mozambican police have accused Renamo of several attacks in central Mozambique, including one which saw the release of 48 inmates from Inhazonia open prison and the robbery of a health unit and an agricultural company.
Renamo’s armed wing men raided the Inhazónia jail north of Báruè in Manica province on Monday, freeing 48 inmates, Manica police spokeswoman Elsidia Filipe told Lusa. The group also stole prison guards uniforms, handcuffs and mobile phones. There is no indication that weapons were stolen or that anyone was hurt, police said.
A second attack, also at dawn, targeted the health centre in Honde, an administrative post south of Báruè, where a military position has been installed since the beginning of the current conflict. Drugs and clinical equipment were stolen.
A third attack by the armed wing of the main opposition party was directed against the Vanduzi Company, which grows and exports vegetables to Europe, where four motorcycles and agricultural equipment was stolen. It, too, is close to a military position.
According to the police, a Defence and Security Forces (FDS) unit was dispatched to the area to neutralize the armed group, which continued to provoke instability along the N7 linking the provinces of Manica and Tete.
Renamo gunmen also attacked the admisitration of Mississi village in the Mandimba district of Niassa province on Monday, severely wounding a guard who was protecting a construction company vehicle, newspaper Notícias citing a police source as saying.
In addition, the Mozambican Information Agency (AIM) reports an attack in the Inhamitanga region in the center of the country on mining company train en route from Moatize to the port of Beira.
The center and north of the country have been the scene of clashes between the Defense and Security Forces and Renamo’s armed wing in the context of the current military instability, as well as the exchange of accusations of kidnapping and murder.
Renamo demands to rule in six central and northern provinces where it claims victory in the general elections of 2014, accusing Frelimo of having vitiated the ballot to keep itself in power fraudulently.
Representatives of the two parties started a negotiation process in Maputo, in the presence of international mediation, still without results.
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