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| - Zambia has deployed the military to curb a wave of attacks on civilians by gangs using a special gas to immobilise their victims, the country's vice president said Friday. The move to send soldiers into the streets came after the assaults prompted panicked rioting, the lynching of three suspected attackers and a warning from the US embassy. "The president... has directed the army to be on the streets," Vice President Inonge Wina told lawmakers during parliamentary question time. The criminal gangs spray a gas that makes their targets dizzy before they attack, according to local media reports. Police have said they are probing "incidences of malicious administering of chemical substance on innocent citizens by criminals". An AFP correspondent saw at least three military trucks carrying dozens of armed soldiers patrolling the streets of Lusaka on Friday. "We cannot continue to see people being terrorised," Inonge said. "These are terrorists' crimes that the state must respond to in a manner that befits terrorists' crimes. They are meant to make the country ungovernable and we will find the culprits," she said. On Thursday, mobs of residents rioted in the capital, where they attacked and killed three suspected gang members, police said in a statement. The vice president said the attacks, which initially started in the northern Copperbelt region before spreading to Lusaka, were fuelled by fake news being peddled on social media. "The gassing of innocent Zambians is a very un-Zambian phenomenon and is being fuelled by social media," she said. At least six Facebook posts referring to the alleged incidents have been shared hundreds of times and viewed thousands more in the last few days, according to AFP's southern Africa fact-checking team. Details in the posts have varied, from claims of vigilante attacks against alleged perpetrators to the use of old images lifted from unrelated online reports. The attacks have prompted the US embassy in Lusaka to issue a security alert. "Rumors of ritualistic killings and residential gassings have led to incidents of civil unrest and vigilante justice in multiple provinces throughout the country," it said in a alert issued on Thursday. "Reports of rioting and civil disturbances are increasing in some provinces, to include Lusaka". os-bh-sn/nb/pma
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