Renamo gunmen killed in clashes

Maputo. – At least two gunmen linked to Renamo were killed on Tuesday in an exchange of fire with Mozambique government forces in the small town of Pembe. Two other gunmen believed to be loyal to opposition party Renamo were captured, according to a news report on STV.

Mozambican security forces also suffered an unconfirmed number of casualties in the clash in southern Inhambane province, the report said.

Renamo is the former rebel group that signed a peace deal with the ruling Frelimo party in 1992, ending the long and bloody civil war that followed the departure of colonial power Portugal from the southern African country along the Indian Ocean. Although Renamo is the largest opposition party in Parliament with 51 of 250 seats, its officials nevertheless tore up the peace agreement in recent months after the military took over Afonso Dhlakama’s bush headquarters in Sofala in October.

The military attacked Dhlakama’s hideout in retaliation for attacks by Renamo guerrillas in central Sofala province, about 1 000km north of the capital Maputo. A senior Renamo leader was killed in the raid.

Dhlakama has been on the run since then. The Ministry of Defence confirmed Tuesday’s attack and said information gathered from the scene indicated that Dhlakama was behind it.

The ministry called it a clear attempt to destabilise the country economically, politically and socially.
Cristovo Chume, defence policy director in the Defence Ministry, said Renamo was recruiting men to beef up its combat capacity.
The unrest has emptied out the towns of Fanha Fanha and Pembe, as people fled in fear of possible rebel attacks.

Many residents lack transport to ferry their belongings to safety in the nearby district centre. Men spent the weekend removing the zinc roofs from their homes to safety, and business activity had been completely paralysed.

The Mozambican Defence Ministry on Tuesday confirmed the presence of groups of gunmen of the former rebel movement Renamo in Homoine district, in the southern province of Inhambane.

This contradicts the public position taken on Monday by the spokesperson of the Inhambane provincial police command, Delcir Marquel, who claimed there was no Renamo presence in Homoine, just groups of cattle thieves.

At a press conference, the National Director of Defence Policy in the Defence Ministry, Colonel Cristovao Chume said not only had Renamo gunmen entered Homoine, but some of them have been arrested.

“Renamo has moved men into Inhambane, particularly into Homoine, and has put psychological pressure on people living there”, said Chume.

This had led to frightened people abandoning their homes and their property, because of the traumas of the past “notably the massacres carried out by Renamo during the war of destabilisation”.

Homoine was the scene of the worst single atrocity during the war when, on July 18, 1987 Renamo attacked the district capital, Homoine Town, and slaughtered 424 people.

He declined to say how many Renamo members have been detained in Homoine. The Renamo detainees, both in Homoine, and in the central district of Gorongosa, Chume said, had confirmed that the orders Renamo receives are still coming from the movement’s leader, Dhlakama.

Chume said that, even before the armed forces had seized the main Renamo bases in Sofala province, at Satunjira and Maringue, in late October, Renamo “had been training its former guerrillas and has recently been recruiting young people to implement a strategy of dividing the country”.

Dhlakama’s plan, he alleged, was to divide the country at the Save river, which separates Inhambane and Sofala, and is the conventional boundary between southern and central Mozambique.

Renamo attacks in Sofala have concentrated on the stretch of the main north-south highway between the Save and the small town of Muxungue.

Chume noted that recently this has included not only ambushes against convoys, but the digging of trenches across the road, which is of crucial importance for the Mozambican economy.

Dhlakama, said Chume, “wants to continue terror in order to avoid the political dialogue proposed by President Armando Guebuza. This is intended to put pressure on the government and on the population so that the government will accept Renamo’s demands and so that there will be no dialogue”. – SAPA-AIM.