Two injured in bus attack in central Mozambique

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Two injured in bus attack in central Mozambique

1:46 CAT | 03 Nov 2020

File photo: Lusa

Two people were injured this Tuesday in an attack on a bus in the area between Gorongosa and Nhamatanda districts in central Mozambique, several witnesses told Lusa.

A woman suffered gunshot wounds to her right leg and a young man was hit by shards of flying glass during an attack at around 6:00 a.m. in Matenga village (Sofala) on the Maning Nice bus, a passenger told Lusa.

“We had passed Inchope, and about 40 kilometres later we started to hear gunshots,” a passenger travelling on the bus told Lusa.

The vehicle had left Chimoio, in the centre of the country, bound for the city of Nampula, in the north.

A video taken by one of the passengers and sent to Lusa shows the bus in motion with the passengers in a panic, many crouched and one of them lying in the space between the seats, while a woman cleans up blood on one of the seats.

Also shown are windows with bullet holes and glass splinters on the empty seats.

“We were attacked in a thinly wooded area, with shots coming from both sides of the road. It was very scary,” passenger Ezequiel Tomás related.

The area has a history of ambushes on civilian vehicles, attributed, since August 2019, to the self-proclaimed Renamo Military Junta, a splinter group of the country’s largest opposition party.

Contacted by Lusa, dissident leader Mariano Nhongo denied responsibility for the attack, and insisted he was unaware of the latest incident.

“The military junta is not carrying out attacks. We do not know about this attack and I do not even know where it was,” Mariano Nhongo said in a telephone statement.

Sofala police promised a statement by the end of the day, spokesman Daniel Macuácua told Lusa.

The new attack comes three days after the end of a seven-day unilateral truce declared by Mozambican president Filipe Nyusi with a view to promoting dialogue with the Renamo dissident group.

The group is the main suspect in the attacks that have already caused about 30 deaths in the centre of the country since August 2019.

Mariano Nhongo and his men are also opposed to the current leadership of the Mozambican National Resistance (Renamo) and demand better reintegration conditions than those defined in the Peace and National Reconciliation Agreement signed in 2019.

Source: Lusa