Police in Madagascar killed at least 14 people and wounded 28 others on Monday when they opened fire on a crowd of angry protesters after the abduction of an albino child, local officials said.
“The gendarmes (…) fired on the crowd,” said Jean Brunelle Razafintsiandraofa, MP for the eastern district of Ikongo, where the incident took place. “Nine people died on the spot,” said Tango Oscar Toky, chief doctor at the local hospital. And of the 33 wounded received in the morning, five died in hospital, he added.
During the day, gunfire rang out in Ikongo. Since last week, the small town has been in shock: a child, an albino, has disappeared and the authorities suspect an abduction.
On the large Indian Ocean island, people with albinism are regularly the target of violence. More than a dozen abductions, attacks and murders have been reported in the past two years, according to the United Nations.
Four suspects have been arrested by the gendarmes. But the residents are determined to take justice into their own hands. In the morning, they went to the gendarmerie barracks and asked for the four suspects to be handed over, according to Jean Brunelle Razafintsiandraofa.
According to a gendarmerie source told AFP, at least 500 people turned up, some with “white weapons” and “machetes”.
