Maputo — Students at the Maputo Commercial Institute are regularly threatened and robbed at knife point by criminals who ambush them as they leave the Institute at the end of night classes.

This would be serious anywhere - but at the Commercial Institute it is astonishing, since this building is next door to the Maputo City Police Command.

Not surprisingly, the students are appalled: cited in Friday's issue of the daily paper "Noticias", some of them asked how it was possible for such robberies to take place under the very nose of the Maputo police.

There is no secret about the criminals' activities. They hang around on the premises of a nearby primary school: then, about half an hour before the Institute night classes end (at 21.00), they move into position, armed with knives, wire-cutters and similar weapons.

Their preferred targets are women students. Thus last Monday a group of thugs attacked a woman leaving the Institute and stole her mobile phone. On 16 January, another woman was beaten and seriously injured - she lost a purse containing a mobile phone and large sums of money.

This woman was dragged into a street behind Radio Mozambique, where she was beaten - apparently without any of the many security guards in the vicinity noticing that anything was amiss.

The director of the Commercial Institute, Ababacar Ibrahimo, said that the situation was very serious, in that a large number of armed thugs were hanging around in the vicinity. He said the police had been alerted.

But, rather than depend on the police, the Institute is taking such measures as closing one of the entrances, and advising students to leave the premises in groups.