The Police in Malawi said they arrested 140 suspected members of vigilante mobs that have targeted people accused of vampirism, clamping down after a wave of attacks that have killed at least nine, The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports.
The report:
- The lynch mob attacks began in mid-September in four districts in Southern Malawi, where belief in witchcraft is widespread.
- This week they spread to Blantyre, the country’s second-biggest city, where mobs torched one person and stoned another to death on Wednesday.
- “We have so far arrested 140 people we suspect are behind the mob killings in Blantyre and other districts and the investigations are still going on,” Lexon Kachama, Inspector-General of Malawi Police, told reporters.
- President Peter Mutharika has also been visiting parts of the country affected by the violence.
- UN and U.S. embassy have blacklisted several districts in Malawi as dangerous zones for staffers and nationals.
- UN also pulled staff out of two areas in southern Malawi.
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