Nampula, Mozambique, Feb. 7, 2025 (Lusa) - The Mozambique police in Nampula shot dead on Thursday seven members of the Naparamas paramilitary group who were trying to invade an administrative post in that province in the north of the country, said the spokesman for the corporation, without confirming whether they were killed.
Dércio Samuel explained that the people who were shot were part of a group of 100 people who, armed with sharp instruments, including arrows, intended to vandalise the Aube administrative post in the Angoche district, more than 170 kilometres from Nampula, the provincial capital.
"The police district command deployed a force to that post in order to prevent these acts from taking place and, when they arrived on the scene, the members of the police were met and confronted with acts of violence (...) In these confrontations, one officer was injured and there were seven casualties on the part of the Naparamas (...)," said the spokesman for the corporation at a press conference.
According to the spokesman, the group came from the neighbouring district of Larde and were demanding that the thirty measures advocated by former presidential candidate Venâncio Mondlane, who is leading the challenge to Mozambique's election results, be implemented.
"They also wanted to capture the head of the post in order to kill him, as well as the destruction of public and private infrastructure, claiming non-compliance with the decisions of their leader Venâncio Mondlane," he said.
On 21 January, Mondlane, who rejects the results of the 9 October general elections, presented a document that he classified as "30 government measures" for the next 100 days, from what he describes as the "Office of the president-elect", demanding, among other things, a reduction in the prices of products, suspension of water payments and the setting up of an "autonomous court" to issue "sentences" against the police, alleging the "macabre wave" of "summary executions" of demonstrators.
The Naparamas are Mozambican paramilitaries who emerged in the 1980s during the civil war, combining traditional knowledge and mystical elements to fight their enemies, acting as a community.
Historically, the Naparamas classify themselves as a force that organised itself spontaneously for the public's self-defence in the face of the war at the time and its members undergo initiation rites designed to give them alleged "supernatural protection" which they believe makes them immune, even to bullets.
On 2 January, alleged members of the Naparamas group beheaded a neighbourhood secretary in the Murrumbala district of Zambezia province and placed the victim's head in a public square, a police source told Lusa.
Mozambique has been experiencing intense social unrest since October, with demonstrations and stoppages first called by Venâncio Mondlane.
Today, small-scale protests are taking place in different parts of the country and, as well as contesting the results, people are complaining about the rising cost of living and other social problems.
Since October, at least 327 people have died, including around two dozen minors, and around 750 have been shot during the protests, according to the electoral platform Decide, a non-governmental organisation that monitors electoral processes.
AYF/AYLS // AYLS
Lusa
