Nine dead in Madagascar in clashes with armed zebu rustlers

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ANTANANARIVO — Nine people were killed as police and gendarmes intervened after a gang of armed cattle thieves seized a thousand cattle in southern Madagascar, the gendarmerie said Sunday.

Six rustlers, two gendarmes and a police officer died in the fighting, after around 130 armed men seized the zebu, a local breed of cattle.

“The police received a report of a theft of 1,000 zebus in Ihaborano,” in the southern part of the Indian Ocean island, said the gendarmerie report.

The clashes “resulted in three deaths on the side of the units maintaining law and order and six on the side of the bandits,” it added.

Police managed recover around 600 head of cattle.

The theft of Zebu, traditionally a way for youths to prove their manhood and win the favour of the in-laws, has turned into a booming criminal trade in the arid isolated south of Madagascar.

Several dozen people have died in clashes between security forces and the cattle raiders with AK-47s in what is one of the world’s poorest countries.

Photo AFP/File, Bilal Tarabey