Maputo — Two unidentified people still at large, one of them bearing a firearm, attempted unsuccessfully to assassinate Mozambique's assistant attorney general, Isabel Rupia, on Wednesday evening.

According to a press release from the office of Attorney- General Joaquim Madeira, the attack took place at about 20.30 as Rupia was leaving a relative's house in the Maputo suburb of Jardim. Confronted with the assailants, Rupia at first believed they wanted to steal her car, but when she offered them the keys, they rejected them, and began to insult her.

What seemed to have served her life was that the gun jammed, when the attacker attempted to shoot. With their main purpose foiled, the attackers seized Rupia's mobile phone, in order to delay her notifying the police.

The Attorney-General's Office believes that the attack was motivated by Rupia's work on investigations into organised crime networks. She is heading teams investigating two cases that indicate high level corruption in provincial governments - one concerns the purchase of stolen vehicles by the Planning and Finance Directorate in the northern province of Cabo Delgado, and the second concerns alleged embezzlement by the former director of finance in the central province of Sofala, Jose Beirao.

Much to the annoyance of the Attorney-General's office, Beirao was freed by a Sofala judge after Rupia had ordered his preventive detention.

The attack against Rupia recalls the attempt on the life of another of the assistant attorney-generals, Albino Macamo, on 14 February 2001.

The modus operandi of the criminals was exactly the same: they laid in wait for him outside the home of a relative (in this case, his mother) whom he was visiting. Macamo was less fortunate than Rupia, and was shot twice, in the right arm and left leg.

Nobody has been arrested for this attack.