Mozambique President Armando Guebuza/AFP
“Our political delegation in Beira was attacked this morning by the armed forces and special police,” Renamo spokesman Fernando Mazanga told AFP, referring to the country’s second city, a major port.
“They are occupying our offices there and the house our president Afonso Dhlakama has in the city.”
Around 150 armed men struck in the morning, and injured a security guard, the group claimed.
“They tortured a security guard. They beat him,” said Mazanga.
Tensions have been building between Renamo militants and the Frelimo-led government since last April, with several attacks and counter attacks reported.
During the Cold War the Mozambican National Resistance (Renamo) and the Mozambique Liberation Front (Frelimo) fought a brutal civil war, which by the time it ended in 1992 had killed around one million people.
On October 21, Renamo accused the ruling party of having broken their 21-year peace deal after soldiers took over its main base in the central Gorongosa mountains.
The area has great symbolic significance as a heartland for the former rebel movement, then an anti-Communist force which launched a civil war against the Marxist regime of the time two years after independence from Portugal in 1977.
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