FILE: Two British women injured in Zanzibar acid attack

Record ID: 860442

  • Title: FILE: Two British women injured in Zanzibar acid attack
  • Date: 8th August 2013
  • Summary: STONETOWN, ZANZIBAR, TANZANIA (FILE - OCTOBER 2012) (REUTERS) VARIOUS OF HISTORIC AREAS OF THE OLD TOWN VARIOUS OF TOURISTS ON BEACH STONETOWN, ZANZIBAR, TANZANIA (FILE) (REUTERS) VARIOUS OF TRADERS IN MARKET FORADANI GARDENS ON STONETOWN'S WATERFRONT
  • Embargoed: 23rd August 2013 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Tanzania, United Republic of
  • City:
  • Country: Tanzania, United Republic of
  • Topics: Crime
  • Reuters ID: LVA4AR410ESTTNM0YA2QJG6TM3KX
  • Aspect Ratio:
  • Story Text: Men riding a motorbike threw acid at two British teenage girls in Tanzania's semi-autonomous Zanzibar region, leaving them with facial, chest and back injuries, a senior police official said on Thursday (August 9).
    The pair, both 18, were flown to Tanzania's commercial capital Dar es Salaam.
    They had been volunteering at a local school in Zanzibar, an island that is popular with international tourists but has suffered a wave of deadly protests last year as supporters of an Islamist group repeatedly clashed with the police.
    Britain is concerned about Wednesday's (August 7) attack and is "in contact with the Tanzanian authorities", the Foreign Office said in a statement.
    The police described the attack as "an isolated incident", refusing to link it to rising religious tension on the island between majority Muslims and its Christian population.
    The Britons were expected to fly home on Thursday.
    The attack comes during the tourist season in the historic town and after a Zanzibar Muslim leader, Sheikh Fadhil Suleiman Soraga, was hospitalised with acid burns in a November attack.
    Two Christian leaders were killed early this year in separate attacks.
    A separatist group in Zanzibar, Uamsho (Awakening), is pushing for the archipelago to exit from its 1964 union with mainland Tanzania, which is ruled as a secular country. Uamsho wants to introduce Islamic Sharia law in Zanzibar.
    Supporters of the group have engaged in running street battles with the police in the past, but authorities have not linked the group with the attacks on Christian clerics.
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