New ‘double’ attack on Nagi bus injures crew in Central Mozambique

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New ‘double’ attack on Nagi bus injures crew in Central Mozambique

3:52 CAT | 24 Mar 2016

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VOA Portugues / Reuters

Alleged Renamo gunmen attacked a Nagi Investment bus twice, on the Save-Muxungué section of the N1 in Mombé district yesterday [March 23] morning. Two crew members were injured and Lusa news agency reports that these were “two separate attacks”. In the first attack, which took place at around 7h30a.m., the packed bus was hit by bullets fired at close range and immobilised, a witness told Lusa.

“We had passed a subunit of the defence and security forces some 30 metres earlier when the shots halted our vehicle. There were around seven shots fired. Some shots hit the two crew members and the others the fuel tanks and the tyres. We had to stop for an hour and a half waiting for them to change the tyre and seal the fuel tanks,” a witness travelling on the bus told Lusa.

While stemmed the bus repair, the witness said, with a column of about 200 vehicles escorted by the army, there was a “strong confrontation” during a defense and security forces persecution of the armed men, suspected of being linked to the Mozambican National Resistance (Renamo).

This first attack on the bus took place 25 kilometres south of Muxúnguè, close to the administrative post of Chibabava, in Sofala, centre of Mozambique.

After resuming its journey, the same Nagi bus was again attacked, in another point of the road.

This is the third attack on Nagi Investiments ‘machimbombos’ (big buses) in March. The first Nagi bus came under fire in Honde in Manica province, resulting in the death of two crew members, and three days later another bus was riddled with bullets in the Binga region of Zambezia, without causing injuries.

The military wing of Renamo accuses Nagi Investments of routinely transporting military personnel into its central Mozambique stronghold, its buses therefore being legitimate targets for attack.

Source: Lusa / VOA Portugues