FEARS are mounting for the fate of some 200 Tanzanians, many of them wounded, who fled deadly political violence on Pemba island by boat, amid reports that a police helicopter fired on the vessels and dropped grenades on them.
An opposition Member of Parliament in Pemba – part of Tanzania’s offshore state of Zanzibar – said at least 100 people drowned as a result.
Among three boats that left Pemba, ”one of them reached Kenya, the other two with injured people aboard sunk after one police helicopter opened fire at them and launched grenades,” MP Moussa Haji Kombo said.
Police authorities in the Tanzanian capital denied that a police helicopter had shot at the boats.
”I do not have that information and why should the police kill people in the vessels? Our force is not that brutal,” said Adadi Rajabu, director of criminal investigations at police headquarters in Dar es Salaam.
But a police source in Zanzibar town said that a helicopter had pursued the boat, which had set of from the northern port of Mkondoani, to persuade it to return to Pemba.
The source said that police had received orders to prevent people leaving the island because that ”would look bad.” He said he was not sure if the helicopter had shot at the boat, which was some 20km out to sea at the time.
The source said investigations had begun into reports that the two boats with some 200 people aboard had capsized in rough seas later the same night.
More than 30 people from Pemba had arrived on the Kenyan coast by Tuesday morning, and some of them were being treated in hospital for gunshot wounds. Some of these patients said that Tanzanian police and army had shot at people on the ground in Pemba from helicopters.
In Pemba, many people were still hiding out in the bush for fear of further violence from the police. Relatives said they were not sure if their loved ones were dead, holed up somewhere or had left the island.
In London, Amnesty International said ”the excessive force used by the Tanzanian police … in an attempt to prevent freedom of assembly is appalling.” – AFP