A month before a presidential election run-off, Zimbabwe’s opposition said on Tuesday conditions were not conducive for a free and fair poll, but still expressed confidence it would oust Robert Mugabe. "As of yesterday [Monday], at least 50 of our supporters had been killed in violent attacks." the Movement for Democratic Change said.
The Southern African Development Community (SADC) is to send a beefed-up observer mission for Zimbabwe’s run-off election next month to ensure "greater transparency", Angola’s Foreign Minister was quoted as saying on Monday. Zimbabwe opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai has been lobbying the 14-nation SADC to send more observers.
The death toll from the collapse of a police squad headquarters in Angola’s capital this weekend rose to 30 on Tuesday as rescuers scoured the rubble for bodies, state media said. Another 145 people pulled out of the debris are still receiving treatment in several hospitals in Luanda.
Rescuers have found six more bodies buried under a collapsed police building in the Angolan capital, Luanda, bringing the death toll to 21, the head of the civil protection service said on Monday. He said 147 people were rescued from the ruins of the national criminal investigation department building in Luanda.
Angolan rescuers brought out seven more bodies from the rubble of a collapsed police criminal investigation headquarters, bringing the death toll to 15, state media said on Monday. The victims — all women — were found in the women’s detection unit which was the worst hit when the seven-storey building collapsed in the capital Luanda.
Scores of detainees were injured on Saturday when a six-storey police building collapsed in the Angolan capital Luanda. Angolan police chief Ambrosio de Lemos said the cause of the collapse of the National Criminal Investigation Department building was so far unknown but no ”external factor” was involved.
Angola’s government will go ahead with plans to disarm civilians possessing illegal firearms obtained mostly during the country’s 27-year civil war. The government won approval from the National Disarmament Commission, the Angop news agency quoted deputy commander of the National Police for Public Order, Paulo de Almeida, as saying.
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/ 20 January 2008
A twin-engine plane slammed into a mountain in rain and fog in Angola’s central highlands, killing at least 11 people, state media reported. Angolan National Radio said there were no survivors among the 11 people on board the Beechcraft-200 when it crashed on Saturday morning.
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/ 27 December 2007
Angolan President Jose Eduardo dos Santos said on Thursday that the oil-rich African nation would hold its delayed parliamentary elections on September 5 and 6 next year, the state-run Angop news agency reported. An estimated eight million Angolans are expected to vote in the election. The country has not held a national poll since a disastrous 1992 presidential race.
Five children were killed and another seriously injured in an Angolan central rural district when they tried to open a mortar shell left from the civil war, an official said on Tuesday. The children were playing in Dando village, near Nharea in Bie province, when they discovered the 81mm shell.
Authorities in Angola have cleared about 50-million square metres of landmines under the country’s ongoing demining programme, state media reported on Tuesday. The coordinator of the executive demining commission, Joao Baptista Kussumua, made the statement at a ceremony to receive two demining machines donated by the Japanese government.