Mozambique: Five injured as population invades Tete police station and officers open fire – Watch

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Mozambique: Five injured as population invades Tete police station and officers open fire – Watch

2:51 CAT | 08 Feb 2023

Screen grab: TVM

About 200 people invaded a police station in Tete, central Mozambique, on Friday in an attempt to punish suspects in a homicide, but police defended themselves with live fire, wounding five, a corporation source told Lusa on Monday.

“The Police of the Republic of Mozambique was obliged to use the necessary means to restore order in the enclosure,” provincial police spokesman Feliciano da Câmara said in defence of the shooting.

The five people injured during the clash were admitted to Tete provincial hospital and are “out of danger”, he added.

The crowd advanced on Tete city’s Third Police Station as they returned from the funeral of a motorcycle taxi driver who had been murdered two days earlier.

Knowing that the suspects were being held there, they were seeking to take justice into their own hands, and clashed with security force agents.

The rioters demanded the release of the three suspects in order “to lynch them”, saying that they had no confidence in justice being delivered, it having so far failing to stop what they call “a wave of murders” of motorcycle taxi drivers, prior to their motorbikes being stolen.

The population hurled objects at the police and vandalized the station as well as police and private vehicles.

By the end of the turmoil, 11 people had been arrested for riot, and 16 motorcycles seized from the group instigating the action, the police spokesman said.

The police would return the seized motorcycles this Tuesday during a meeting with the Matundo neighbourhood community, he added.

The meeting would seek to “restore popular collaboration and trust”, in addition to “reaffirming” the police as a “legitimate force for guaranteeing order,” he concluded.

Watch the TVM report.