Maputo, Mozambique — The Mozambican government has instructed the police to work with Interpol and police forces in the neighbouring countries to hunt down the killers of Carlos Cardoso, editor of the daily newsheet Metical, who was murdered Wednesday in Maputo.

Prime Minister Pascoal Mocumbi told a Maputo press briefing Thursday that the government "will spare no effort so that the moral and material authors of this crime will be arrested, tried and sentenced."

Since all the indications are that this was a highly organised crime, and the murderers might have tried to flee the country, the police had been instructed to make this a regional investigation.

South African High Commissioner Jessie Duarte, told the Mozambican news agency that Pretoria had offered "expert help" to the Mozambican authorities to track down the assassins.

Mocumbi paid warm tribute to Cardoso, praising him for "his unceasing fight for truth, for justice, and for the well-being of his fellow citizens."

"Carlos Cardoso was a man of integrity, a combative and consistent journalist, who held strong convictions, and who defended his ideas persistently and tenaciously," he said.

"The brutal and cruel murder of our fellow citizen is an act of cowardice," he stressed. "It is an assault against freedom, an attempt to silence the voices who fight for honesty and for the progress of our country."

Mocumbi reiterated the government's commitment "to do all in our power so that the Mozambican media is truly free and independent, and committed to our people."

Meanwhile, a member of the Mozambican parliament, Luis Videira, read out a declaration on behalf of the parliamentary group of the ruling RELIMO party, expressing condolences to Cardoso's family and to the country's journalists.

He called on the authorities "to ensure that this heinous crime is fully investigated and that the murderers are severely punished."

"We have lost a fighter for the construction of the Mozambican motherland," Videira declared.

The circumstances of Cardoso's murder, from eye-witness accounts of passers-by and from the lacerated state of his body, are now fairly clear.

The attack occurred at about 18.40 PM Wednesday evening as a Metical driver, Carlos Manjate, was driving Cardoso from the paper's offices to his home. On a central Maputo street, Avenida Martires da Machava, in front of a local park, a car suddenly pulled in front of the Metical vehicle, a Toyota Corolla, forcing it to stop.

A second car drew up alongside, and a gunman opened fire with an AK-47 assault rifle at point blank range. Cardoso was hit several times in the head, dying almost instantly.

The shooting was over in a matter of seconds, and the two cars used in the ambush then drove off into the night.

Manjate was also hit in the hail of bullets, but he survived, and is currently in the intensive care unit in Maputo Central Hospital.

The site of the murder has become an impromptu shrine. At the spot where the Toyota was forced to halt, and where shattered glass from its windows can still be seen in the road, there is the stump of a dead tree.

On top of this stump, friends and passers-by have left flowers, and messages of sorrow and outrage. When a Mozambique news agency reporter visited the spot Thursday morning, two women, tears in their eyes, were lighting candles there in memory of one of Mozambique's most outspoken and courageous journalists.