June 24 (UPI) — At least eight people, including Zimbabwe’s Vice President Kembo Mohadi, were injured Saturday in an assassination attempt on the nation’s president, Emmerson Mnangagwa.
Mnangagwa was leaving the stage after addressing a campaign rally at White City Sports Stadium in Bulawayo, Zimabwe’s second-largest city, when an explosion occurred, video footage from the rally shows, the Wall Street Journal reported.
The president survived the assassination attempt, but the blast injured several senior party leaders, including second vice president Mohadi and Zanu-PF national chiarman Cde Oppah Muchinguri-Kashiri, Zimbabwean newspaper The Herald reported.
“Vice President Mohadi is nursing some leg injuries, but he is in good spirit,” presidential spokesman George Charamba told The Herald.
The assassination attempt came five weeks ahead of the first national elections since longtime leader Robert Mugabe‘s ouster.
Similarly, in Ethiopia, violence broke out Saturday, apparently also targeting a top government official there. A grenade thrown into a rally for new Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, in Ethiopia’s capital Addis Ababa, killed one person and injured more than a hundred people. Ahmed, 41, has angered some elites with his political and economic changes. He was taken away to safety after the explosion.
