Armoured vehicle runs over woman in Maputo protests

A woman has been mown down by a military vehicle in the Mozambican capital, Maputo, as protests grip the southern Africa country weeks after an election that the opposition said was rigged.

- Rachel Savage, Samuel Comé

Videos of the incident on Wednesday, widely shared on social media, showed an armoured vehicle speeding down a busy street into a makeshift wooden barricade manned by protesters and plastered with a picture of the opposition leader, Venâncio Mondlane – who has claimed that he won the 9 October election – and then driving over the woman.

She sustained head injuries but her life was not in danger, the director of the emergency department at Maputo Central hospital said yesterday.

Mozambique's armed forces said in a statement that it "accidentally ran over a citizen" and would take responsibility for her medical care at the hospital. "The [armed forces] deeply regrets what happened," it said.

Police also shot and killed two protesters on Wednesday in the northern city of Nampula, after a crowd that had barricaded a road and burned tyres confronted officers sent to break up the protest, an activist said.