Armed members of Mozambique's former rebel movement Renamo have murdered three policemen in the town of Inhaminga, in the central province of Sofala.
The source for this alarming news is none other than Renamo itself. Renamo announced the deaths of the three policemen in a press statement on Friday, but claimed that its members were acting "in self defence", and expressed regret.
The deaths have not yet been confirmed by the police, or any other official source.
The clashes between what Renamo calls its "Presidential Guard" and the riot police occurred on Thursday, and followed violent incidents, involving a Renamo attack on Quisito Paulino, a local official of the ruling Frelimo Party.
The Renamo release admits that its men beat up Paulino and his wife, but said this was in retaliation for an earlier incident in which Paulino supposedly ordered the beating of the Inhaminga Renamo delegate.
Quisito Paulino was hospitalised with a broken arm - so this was a clear case of a serious assault, admitted by Renamo.
Nonetheless, the release describes the subsequent arrest of the Renamo delegate as "unjust".
The Renamo "Presidential Guard" went to the police command demanding the release of the delegate: the release claims that the police handed him over without any violence.
Truckloads of riot police then arrived from Beira, and Renamo claims that in the ensuing shoot-out it was the police that opened fire on the positions taken by the "Presidential Guard". According to the release, Renamo leader Afonso Dhlakama telephoned the general commander of the Mozambican police, Miguel dos Santos, on Thursday morning, and asked him to withdraw the riot police from Inhaminga.
But instead, a further riot police contingent arrived in Inhaminga on Thursday evening. Renamo also claims that a plane set off from Maputo to Beira on Thursday night carrying more riot police and "heavy weaponry".
The release claimed this was part of a plan by Frelimo general secretary Armando Guebuza, who is also the party's presidential candidate in the December general elections, "to start a war against the Renamo Presidential Guard", and urged dos Santos and President Joaquim Chissano to end the riot police actions in Inhaminga.
What Renamo calls its "Presidential Guard" is just a group of former guerrillas who, in violation of the 1992 peace agreement, were never demobilised. For the last decade they have been a source of instability and violence in Inhaminga and the neighbouring district of Maringue.
This force is entirely illegal: an offer made in the late 1990s to integrate them into the police force was spurned by Dhlakama.
Fonte: AIM
