Madagascar Police killed 19 people and injured 21 when they opened fire on a crowd attempting to storm a police station to seek revenge against suspected criminals.
In a statement on Tuesday, the police also known as gendarmes, said the shooting occurred in the town of Ikongo, about 330 km (205 miles) southeast of the capital Antananarivo on Monday.
The law enforcement body said security forces were sent to restore order in the area.
According to the police, trouble started when a crowd attempted to break into the police station to get hold of four people detained on suspicion of kidnapping an albino child and murdering his mother. The child has not been found.
In some African countries, albino children are sometimes abducted by people who believe they can be used for ritual purposes.
In this case, there was no information about the motive of the alleged abduction.
After the child’s disappearance, four suspects were arrested by the gendarmes and detained in the Ikongo barracks.
However, angry residents wanted to take justice into their own hands.
They went to the gendarmerie barracks on Monday and demanded that the suspects be handed over to them, Jean Brunelle Razafintsiandraofa, a district deputy, told AFP.
According to a police source on the scene, at least 500 people arrived, some of them with “white weapons” and “machetes”.
A security perimeter was then set up, and the gendarmes tried to lower the tension to “avoid a bloodbath“, explained Commander Andry Rakotondrazaka at a press conference on Monday.
He then spoke of “provocations”, people armed with “long-bladed knives and sticks”, as well as stone-throwing. Then the crowd tried to cross the security perimeter.
The gendarmes said they first used tear gas and fired warning shots.
But, as a last resort, they “had no choice but to resort to self-defence,” explained the gendarmerie commander.
“It is a very sad event and it could have been avoided, but what happened was what happened,” he said.
They “fired on the crowd“, said Razafintsiandraofa, who said he would call for a parliamentary enquiry.
The police statement said the situation in Ikongo was now calm, and the security forces had offered the families of the people killed in the shooting financial compensation.
(Reuters/NAN/AFP)