Mozambique mayor killed after anti-graft campaign

MAPUTO: An unknown assailant assassinated Mahamudo Amurane, the mayor of the northern municipality of Nampula, the third largest city in Mozambique, on Wednesday night, while the entire country was celebrating the 25th anniversary of the 1992 peace agreement, signed in Rome between the government and the Renamo rebels.

A spokesperson for the Nampula Provincial Police Command, Zacarias Nacute, said Amurane had been shot three times in the abdomen, outside his home, in Namutequeliua.

Relatives and supporters rushed Amurane to Nampula Central Hospital, but the clinical director, Bainabo Sahal, said he was dead on arrival.

Witnesses to the shooting cited by the daily paper Noticias claimed they had seen a tall man outside a bar next to Amurane’s house. He did not join the crowd drinking on the pavement, but when Amurane came onto the patio of his house, he shot the mayor three times at point-blank range, before walking away towards a nearby cemetery.

Amurane was elected mayor in the 2013 municipal elections, on the ticket of the opposition Mozambique Democratic Movement (MDM). However, he subsequently fell out with the MDM and bitterly criticised leader Daviz Simango, the mayor of Beira.

He claimed the MDM opposed his campaign against municipal corruption which had led to the arrests of several employees of Nampula Council, some of whom were said to be MDM members.

He said in May that the MDM wanted to silence him.

Amurane’s sister, Adelaide, is a member of the central government, as a minister in the office of President Filipe Nyusi.