Armed robbers foiled in Kamembe

Apparently a gang of about 6 Ugandans tried to rob one of the new banks in town. The police caught them, one was shot dead and two escaped. One version I heard was that the gang had bribed one of the guards, who had then informed the police. When the gang arrived at the bank, they had knives and in the fighting one of them was killed.

The group I was discussing with agreed that these criminals were not over-endowed with intelligence. Kamembe has no obvious escape routes - the lake is on one side, the Congo border with its security guards close by, Burundi to the south (again there is border security) and lastly there is the difficult road through Nyungwe, with patrols by soldiers. How they planned to get back to Uganda, or even get rid of the money, is anybody’s guess.

(Note to friends and family - the events took place in the middle of the night and are as rare for Cyangugu as they would be in the UK, or any other part of Rwanda. We are quite safe here and crime rates are very low. Our bank manager said to me that he was not planning any new security measures as a result of the raid).