Maputo — Unidentified gunmen on Wednesday morning shot dead the head of the treasury department in the Planning andFinances Directorate of the central Mozambican province ofSofala, 42 year old Josefa Afonso, near her home in the Beira neighbourhood of Macuti, reports the Beira daily "Diario de Mocambique".
Eyewitnesses, workers at a nearby filling station, were cited as saying that they heard a single shot and soon after that they saw a green Toyota Corolla leaving the scene at high speed.
They said that the killers slightly opened one of the darkened windows of the vehicle, shot the victim, and fled.
The murderers drove over the body of Afonso as they made their escape. The head of the police public relations department in Sofala, Raul Magaica, said that the police are investigating, but do not know the motive for the crime.
This is the second assassination of a senior civil servant in Beira in less than a week. Jaide Pires, an official with the Sofala provincial directorate of agriculture and rural development, was shot dead on Saturday.
Magaica said that the police are still working, but with little chances of solving the murder, because "most of the evidence has disappeared".
Meanwhile, unknown gunmen on Tuesday murdered Atanasio Salvador Chauque, an official working at the customs delegation in the southern city of Matola.
According to a statement issued by the customs services, Chauque was shot by three gunmen, who were lying in wait for him near his home.
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They forced him to leave his vehicle, shot him, and took his car, but abandoned it about a kilometre away, where it was later recovered.
The victim was immediately helped by a neighbour to Maputo Central Hospital, where he died. The criminals are still at large, and the police say that they are working on the case. And in the Maputo suburb of Chamanculo, a group of eight assailants attacked a policeman with machetes and other instruments on Friday causing serious injuries to his head and other parts of his body.
The attackers managed to steal the policeman's pistol, when he fainted as consequence of the blows. The victim was admitted to hospital for treatment.
Thanks to denunciations by local residents, the police later managed to arrest two of the attackers, and the stolen pistol was recovered. The police are using all available information to apprehend the other members of the group.
