Pedro Cossa, a spokesman for the police ministry, told The Associated Press Thursday two of his officers were beaten by mobs the day before. He said the death toll was four, including two protesters shot by police, and 26 people were injured. Mozambique state TV, citing hospital reports, said seven people were killed, including two children caught in the violence as they went home from school. The protesters, most of them young men, had rioted Wednesday over the rising cost of food, fuel and water. They threw stones and looted shops in Maputo, the capital. Cell phone messages late on Wednesday and early Thursday called for more protestson Thursday and today.
Early Thursday, gunshots could be heard in some Maputo neighborhoods. People were staying home, both out of fear of renewed violence and because, with debris from the rioting making roads impassible, buses and taxi vans were not running.
Mozambican police had declared Wednesday’s marches illegal, saying no group sought permission for them. For days, word of the protests had been spread, in some cases by cell phone message, in this former Portuguese colony in southeast Africa.
In an address on state radio and television late Wednesday, President Armando Guebuza called on Mozambicans not to protest Thursday. He said his government would try to meet demands to bring down prices, but that would not be easy. He said Mozambique produced only 30 percent of the wheat it needed, and imported the rest.
Mozambicans have seen the price of a loaf of bread rise by 25 percent, from four to five meticais (from about 11 cents to about 13 US cents) in the past year. Fuel and water costs also have risen.
