21 May 2008
Maputo — A charcoal maker, whose identity was not revealed, uncovered an arms cache in the locality of Matsequenha, in the district of Namaacha, in the southern Mozambican province of Maputo on 13 May.
The spokesperson for the general police command, Pedro Cossa, told reporters on Tuesday that the charcoal maker was working in the bush when he stumbled across the arms cache and immediately alerted the police.
The provincial police command sent a team of experts to the site, where they found four AK-47 assault rifles, 28 rounds of ammunition and one grenade. Cossa said that because of the long time these materials had remained exposed to the elements they are no longer in good working condition. Nonetheless, they are not entirely harmless: Cossa believed the rifles could have been restored to working order after good cleaning and maintenance.
Matsequenha was a major base of the apartheid-backed Renamo rebels in the closing stages of the war of destabilization, which ended with the signing of the October 1992 peace agreement.
This is not the first time that arms caches have been uncovered in the Matsequenha area, where it is known that there are still some zones planted with land mines. Cossa added that the difficulty in getting rid of arms caches left over from the war is finding out exactly where they are.
"Shortly before the signing of the Peace Accord, large numbers of those who fought the war of destabilization were demobilized, some of whom had been involved in planting nines and storing weapons", he said. "That is why, though one may have an idea of the places where land mines were planted and arms were stocked, nobody is sure about this".
He said that, in 2007 alone, 33 arms caches were uncovered in the entire country and 661 firearms, 297 explosive devices, and 54,054 rounds of ammunition were destroyed.
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