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MAPUTO — Four militants of the Mozambican opposition party Renamo killed a driver and abducted 10 others after they attacked a truck in the northern province of Nampula this week, state media reported yesterday.
The truck, carrying 20 people, was ambushed some 45 kilometres from the main city in Nampula Tuesday night. At least 10 people remain unaccounted for, Radio Mozambique said, adding that they might have been abducted at gun-point as hostages.
The gunmen set the truck on fire before fleeing and police who arrived at the scene on Wednesday found only the driver’s body, the report said.
The attackers are thought to be members of Renamo’s “presidential guard”, whose job is to protect their leader Afonso Dhlakama in Nampula.
The 300-member “presidential guard” has been accused of attacking military and civilian targets since early this year, leaving at least a dozen people dead.
Dhlakama and his militants fled their bush camp in the central province of Sofala last week after government troops ran over the place in response to a spate of militant attacks in recent months.
The Nampula authorities feared the Renamo militants were trying to establish a base there.
Motorists said they are now worried about driving on the province’s major highway after nightfall.
The Mozambique Agency (AIM) said Thursday that Renamo has also continued to attack vehicles on the stretch of the main north- south highway between the Save river and the small town of Muxungue, even though they are travelling in convoys and under military escort.
It quoted deputy director of defense policy in the Defense Ministry, Manuel Mazuze, as saying that there had been attacks in the past two days near Muxungue, in which 13 people were injured, two of them in serious conditions.
On Tuesday, a bus travelling from Nampula to Maputo came under fire, while on Wednesday the target was a truck.
Meanwhile, Reuters reports that London-listed Rio Tinto said on Friday it was withdrawing expatriate employees’ families from Mozambique over safety concerns, but its coal mining and shipment operations in the southern African state were continuing.
The move reflected growing international alarm over insecurity in Mozambique, which has seen an upsurge in kidnappings in major cities and where government forces have clashed with Renamo opposition guerrillas in the centre and the north.
“The safety of employees and their families is the number one priority,” Rio Tinto Coal Mozambique said in a statement announcing the precaution, which it said was temporary.
It added: “Rio Tinto Coal Mozambique’s operations continue as planned, including the shipment of coal.”
The London-listed company, along with Brazil’s Vale, mines coal in northwest Tete province and ships it by rail to the coast for export.
In June, Rio Tinto briefly suspended coal exports because of threats by Renamo, which is demanding political reforms from President Armando Guebuza’s government, to disrupt rail traffic.
Since April, Renamo guerrillas have carried out ambushes and raids against civilians and on police and army posts in central Mozambique.
On Thursday, tens of thousands of Mozambicans marched in the capital Maputo and two other cities to protest against the threat of armed conflict in the country and the spate of kidnappings for ransom by criminal gangs. – Xinhua-Reuters.
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