Zimbabwe: Military on high alert as youths chase police with stones in Bulawayo

Bulawayo - Zimbabwe's military is reportedly on high alert as anti-President Robert Mugabe protests continue in some parts of the southern African country, a report said on Wednesday. Military chiefs - together with the heads of the security cluster, which included three cabinet ministers - met behind closed doors to plan a clampdown on the ongoing protests. Highly-placed government sources claimed that the meeting "was a special one to specifically come up with strategies to deal with recent protests and planned ones". The sources revealed that State Security Minister Kembo Mohadi was "furious" that the police had failed to contain the Beitbridge riots as they reportedly knew about them in advance.

Meanwhile, reports on social media indicated that young people had turned the country's second largest city, Bulawayo, upside down, as they burnt tyres in the middle of the roads and threw stones at the police.

See posts on Twitter below. This came as the hashtag #ShutdownZimbabwe gained momentum on social media. Earlier reports indicated that the biggest of Zimbabwe's three mobile operators had confirmed around midday on Wednesday that instant messaging app WhatsApp was down on their network.

 Econet, however, did not disclose the reason for the downtime. "Econet would like to confirm that WhatsApp is currently down. We will notify you once it is working again," Econet's customer care department said in numerous Twitter responses to subscribers.
Credit NewsDay