Mozambique: Five injured in bus attack – Police blame Renamo dissidents

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Mozambique: Five injured in bus attack – Police blame Renamo dissidents

3:01 CAT | 07 Oct 2020

in file CoM

Five people were injured on Tuesday when the bus they were travelling in was hit by a spray of bullets when it was being in a compulsory military escort for civilians in central Mozambique, witnesses and authorities told Lusa on Wednesday.

The incident occurred on the Muxungué-Inchope section, near Mozambique’s main road.

The Police of the Republic of Mozambique (PRM) in Sofala, which confirmed the latest attack that took place around 08:00 (07:00 Lisbon) on Tuesday, again attributed the violence to the self-proclaimed Junta Militar da Renamo, a dissident group led by the former guerrilla general Mariano Nhongo.

The vehicle and passengers had stayed overnight in Muxungué (Sofala) and were ambushed 30 kilometres north of the village, after joining the column with compulsory escort for civilians.

“We had just joined the first column of the day and we only heard gunshots and then windowpanes burst and the passengers were frightened” Merciano Almeida, a survivor travelling in the bus told Lusa.

After the attack, he said, the driver travelled a distance of 189 kilometres to take the victims to Chimoio Provincial Hospital (HPC).

The vehicle linking Maputo (south) and Tete (centre) left the capital on Monday and was left with several bullet holes in the sides and rear.

Speaking today to Lusa, Juvenal Chitovele, a doctor in the emergency service of the HPC, said that the only victim who came in with a serious medical condition, shot in a thigh, remained stable and was still under observation.

The other four patients were discharged.

The Sofala police said that security measures had been stepped up in the sections targeted by attacks on civilian vehicles on national road number one (N1) in the districts of Sofala and Manica provinces.

“Yesterday, along the N1 in the Muxungué-Inchope section we registered an attack led by ‘bandits’ belonging to the self-proclaimed Junta Militar da Renamo,” said Daniel Macuacua, spokesman for the Sofala Police Command, adding that the circulation of vehicles and goods on the road had been re-established.

He added that the gunmen were along the road and were carrying AK-47 type weapons when they fired at the vehicles.

The attacks followed others on roads and in villages in the provinces of Manica and Sofala, where dissident guerrillas from the Mozambican National Resistance (Renamo, the main opposition party), led by Mariano Nhongo, of the self-proclaimed Renamo Military Junta and who have killed at least 30 people since August 2019.

Source: Lusa