Maputo — A group of three criminals, armed with AK-47 assault rifles, attacked a police station in the southern Mozambican city of Matola in the early hours of Sunday morning, killing one police officer, who was on guard duty, and seriously injuring another, reports Monday's issue of the Maputo daily "Noticias".

Stelio Mabjaia was wounded in the abdomen when the three men entered the outer premises of the police station. He assumed they were seeking police assistance, but before he could speak to them, they pulled out their guns and opened fire on him. He died a few hours later in Maputo Central Hospital.

The injured policeman, Jose Manjate, who was inside, came out to learn what was happening, and he was also met with bullets. He was hit in his neck, and is currently under intensive medical care.

Other policemen who were in the police station did not have time to respond to the gunfire because the attackers immediately drove away at high speed in a car they had parked outside.

This is the second time that this police station has come under attack. The first occasion was in 2006, when a group of criminals shot their way into the premises to grab a vehicle which they had stolen earlier but had been recovered by the police. This incident led the Maputo provincial police command to sack the commander of the station.

Police spokesperson Juarce Martins said that an initial assessment of Sunday's attack shows that the criminals' intention was to steal firearms at the police station, but they failed in this. He did not say what evidence he had for this supposition.

At much the same time, a few kilometres away, in the Maputo Aeroporto neighbourhood, police gunned down a suspected car thief. The man, whose name has not been released, died in a shoot-out with the police, while three accomplices managed to escape.

This was the culmination of a chase that began in downtown Maputo at around 22.00 on Saturday night, when four gunmen stole a car from a man they held up at gunpoint. Later in the night the gang stole a second car, a Toyota Corolla. By now the police were on their trail, and chased them across the city to the narrow streets and flimsy shacks of Aeroporto.

The man shot dead had tried to escape into one of the shacks. From the amount of blood on the ground, police deduced that other members of the gang had been wounded. A police officer was injured in the shoot-out and died in hospital some hours later. Three stolen cars were recovered in Aeroporto,