“Nineteen people died and 21 were injured and are being treated” at the hospital in Ikongo, the small town where the riots broke out, the gendarmerie said in a statement, adding that an investigation was ongoing.
Madagascar’s gendarmes confirmed today that they killed 19 people when they opened fire on Monday on an angry mob that had tried to enter their barracks in the south-east of the island, following the suspected abduction of an albino child.
Four suspects were being held there for the kidnapping of an albino child and the murder of his mother, according to a police statement.
But the residents were determined to do justice themselves.
“Nineteen people died and 21 were injured and are being treated” at the hospital in Ikongo, the small town where the riots broke out, the gendarmerie said in a statement, adding that an investigation was ongoing.
The chief physician of the local hospital, Dr. Tango Oscar Toki, gave the same number of dead, responding to AFP by phone.
The gendarmes, who say that calm has now returned to the area, had announced on Monday a first count of 11 dead.
The incident occurred in the town of Ikongo, nearly 330 km southeast of the capital Antananarivo, and security forces sent reinforcements to restore order in the area, according to a police statement.
The child has not been found. In some African countries, children with albinism are abducted by people who believe they can use them in rituals, although in this particular case there was no information on the motive for the alleged abduction.
The police statement says that the situation in Ikongo is now calm and that the families of the people killed by the gendarmes have been offered financial compensation by the security forces.
On the large Indian Ocean island, people with albinism are often targeted for violence. More than 12 abductions, attacks and killings have been recorded in the past two years, according to the UN.
Madagascar’s police force, often criticized by civil society for human rights abuses, rarely sees its members prosecuted.
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