Zimbabwe has given police crack teams approval to shoot and kill suspected armed robbers at sight following a spike in violent crimes in the past few weeks.
Presidential spokesperson George Charamba announced the new measures on Monday after police and armed robbers’ series of gunfights in Harare over the weekend.
Three armed robbers were shot dead during the weekend gunfire exchange with law enforcement agents.
Charamba tweeted “… Guys, stop these armed robberies, you will die. I have warned you, the government will not hesitate. You are a dead man walking, trust me.”
Home Affairs and Cultural Heritage Minister Kazembe Kazembe also said the government would, from now on, show no mercy on the armed robbers. He said:
“The armed robbers are being accounted for. Seven notorious ones were accounted for on Sunday.
Police will descend on them heavily and the long arm of the law will catch up with them.”
Zimbabwe Republic Police (ZRP) national spokesperson Assistant Commissioner Paul Nyathi on Monday assured members of the public that all known miscreants will be accounted for.
“We are not going back and the crack teams that we set up are all over the country tracking the armed robbers, so to those who will try to hide, they will certainly be found and arrested.
The public must rest in the comfort that the police currently are on top of the situation and we are tracking all known armed robbers as evidenced by what happened last weekend,” he said.