Long queues in Mozambique as calm returns
2010-09-03 13:20
Maputo - Long queues for food and fuel formed in the streets of Mozambique's capital Friday as shops reopened after two days of violent protests over rising prices that left seven dead and hundreds wounded.
Calm returned to the capital following two days of protests over food and fuel prices.
The city's largest hospital said the stream of patients injured in the violence had stopped by midnight on Thursday, after fresh clashes between police and demonstrators erupted on Thursday evening.
"By 27:00 (19:00 GMT) it was quiet," Maputo Central Hospital emergency director Antonio Assis da Costa told AFP on Friday morning.
"Later some patients arrived. Maybe the last case would be by midnight," he added.
"Now I'm seeing normal cases. Nobody from the riots came in this morning."
Da Costa said 32 patients treated at the hospital on Thursday had been hit by rubber bullets fired by police.
Maputo residents left hungry after two days of store closures formed 20-metre queues outside bakeries on Friday, but complained they could barely afford to buy bread after a 17% price increase.
Heavy police patrols
"People don't have money to buy food," domestic worker Elisa Aldino said, visibly angry as she queued for bread at a bakery in a middle-class neighbourhood.
"They don't have enough. If they don't have money, they sleep without eating."
Long queues of cars had also formed at petrol stations around the city.
By Friday morning police had reopened major roads and highways closed on Wednesday and Thursday when protesters barricaded them with burning tyres.
Heavy police patrols continued throughout the city on Friday, as small vendors reopened their stalls and small trucks loaded with people and produce took passengers to markets.
Municipal buses had resumed service, though few of the mini-bus taxis that provide transportation for most of the city's poor had returned to the roads.
Residents voiced uncertainty on whether the calm would remain.
"For now we don't know if life has returned to normal," a resident of Xiquelene, an impoverished neighbourhood on the outskirts of Maputo that saw some of the worst clashes between police and rioters, told private broadcaster STV.
Live ammunition
The government said on Thursday that the unrest had left seven people dead and 288 wounded. Police denied reports from witnesses and doctors that they had fired live ammunition at protesters, insisting only rubber bullets had been used.
Government spokesperson Alberto Nkutumula said the two days of unrest had cost the economy 122 million meticals ($3.3m).
Prices in the import-dependent country have risen on the back of a South African rand whose value has appreciated 43% against the Mozambican metical since this time last year.
Mozambique's state utility company implemented a 13.4% rate increase on Wednesday, while the state water supplier raised prices in and around the capital, state newspaper Noticias said.
The price of bread has also risen 17%, increasing pressure on struggling households in a country with a per-capita income of just $794 a year.
The violence is the worst in Mozambique since 2008, when six people were killed in protests against a public transport fare increase.
- SAPA