Polokwane (New Ziana)-Police on Wednesday said suspects in the case of two Zimbabwe National Parks and Wildlife Authority rangers who were killed and thrown into Lake Kariba are Zambians.

Zimbabwe Republic Police (ZRP) national spokesperson Assistant Commissioner Paul Nyathi told New Ziana that Zambian authorities were assisting with the investigations into the murder of the rangers.

“The information we have is that these rangers had arrested some Zambians, so the suspects are Zambians. We would like to thank Zambian authorities who are also cooperating with their Zimbabweans in conducting the investigations,” he said.

Nyathi said post-mortems of the rangers had since been conducted.

“The bodies have been identified by their next of kin; that of Mabharani Chidhumo and also that of Timothy Tembo. We want to pass our condolences to the Tembo and Chidumo families,” he said.

“I can confirm that a post-mortem was done yesterday (Tuesday); the bodies were retrieved from the water on Monday. We are now conducting investigations as the ZRP and we are treating this case as a murder case. We have also recovered the boat from the Zambian side and it has some damages which are also part of these investigations,” he said.

Police said the rangers were three when they arrested the poachers but only two went missing.

“It’s not clear what happened for the other one to remain behind when the other two went missing. So this is also part of our investigations,” he said.

New Ziana