Gunmen kill two Frelimo leaders in central Mozambique – Police

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Gunmen kill two Frelimo leaders in central Mozambique – Police

12:00 CAT | 01 Jul 2016

Two Frelimo officials were killed and 20 injured in three armed attacks attributed to Renamo in Manica, in central Mozambique, Mozambique police told Lusa yesterday.

Manica police spokesman Leonardo Colher said a Frelimo (Mozambique Liberation Front) secretary in Muchenhedzi in the administrative post of Dacata, Mossurize district, was shot dead at his home by four gunmen.

A second Frelimo official in Nhampassa was taken from a bus travelling without escort on National Highway 7 in Barué district and shot dead in front of the passengers by three armed men who then ordered the vehicle to move on.

“The two qualified homicides occurred on June 22, and by their modus operandi, we strongly suspect that Renamo [Mozambique National Resistance] was responsible,” Colher said, adding that all possible means had been triggered to catch the perpetrators and that criminal cases had already been opened.

In a separate incident, 20 people were injured, eight of them seriously, in an ambush on an escorted column on the N7 this week.

“Armed Renamo men opened fire on a column traveling in the Barué-Vanduzi direction, two bullets hitting the driver of a passenger car in the arm and leg, which caused the car to leave the road and overturn,” Colher explained

The head of public relations of the police said that since the introduction of the convoy system, there had been more cases of vehicles along the N7 being set on fire, one of the reasons for the introduction of military protection in the section between Vanduzi in Manica province and Changara in Tete earlier this month.

In the first week of June, at least 12 cargo transport trucks, including tanker trucks, mostly from Malawi, were set on fire along the N7 in Barué district in attacks blamed by authorities on armed Renamo men, leading the Malawian government to warn its citizens of the dangers of using Mozambican roads.

Road traffic on two sections of the N1 in Sofala province was already subject to compulsory military escort because of attacks attributed to armed Renamo men well before the system was implemented on the N7.

Mozambique has experienced a worsening of political violence in recent months, with clashes between Renamo and defence and security forces and mutual accusations of abduction and assassination of party members, and attacks on military and civilian targets in the centre of the country attributed by the authorities to the opposition’s armed wing.

The Mozambican government and Renamo last week resumed talks in Maputo aimed at ending the political and military crisis in the country, several months after Renamo withdrew from negotiations citing lack of progress and a perceived lack of sincerity on the part of the government.

In late May, the Mozambican government and Renamo resumed negotiations on the political and military crisis in Mozambique, the main opposition party having abandoned dialogue with the executive in late 2015 on the grounds of lack of progress.

Source: Lusa