More on Renamo sabotaging Chimoio-Tete road – Mozambique

Login

Register

http://www.clubofmozambique.com/

More on Renamo sabotaging Chimoio-Tete road – Mozambique

2:54 CAT | 19 Apr 2016

Gunmen of the Mozambican rebel movement Renamo early on Sunday morning opened a deep trench across the main highway between the central cities of Chimoio and Tete.

The trench was dug in the Boco-Boco area, in Barue district, near the scene of several Renamo ambushes. Manica provincial police commander Armando Canheze told reporters that during the night Renamo mobilized local residents to help dig the trench.

The trap worked: when vehicles, unaware of the sabotage, attempted to use the road, at least one vehicle fell into the trench. Traffic ground to a halt and the Renamo gunmen attacked from the side of the road, injuring one person and setting three vehicles on fire.

“The trench is very deep. Vehicles can’t pass”, said Canheze. “This morning, at daybreak they set two articulated trucks on fire. Hours later they set a car on fire. So in all three vehicles were burned”.

Units of the defence and security forces were sent to the area to protect a team from the Manica Provincial Directorate of Public Works charged with repairing the road. It took six hours to fill in the trench, and make the road passable again. While the repairs were under way, long queues of vehicles built up at the towns of Catandica and Vanduzi.

This stretch of road is part of National Highway Seven (EN7), and it carries vehicles from the port of Beira through Manica and Tete provinces to Zambia and Malawi. It is estimated that around 300 trucks a day drive to and from the neighbouring countries along this road.

At a press conference in the Manica provincial capital, Chimoio, the spokesperson for the police command, Elsidia Filipe, said sabotaging the road was incomprehensible, since it serves all the inhabitants of the region, including the families of the Renamo gunmen themselves.

She promised that the police units on the ground will continue to pursue the Renamo gangs to stop them from continuing to obstruct the country’s development.

Source: AIM