Maputo  - The government has given the state oil and gas company permission to explore the large gas reserve at the Buzi bloc in central Mozambique.

ENH (the National Hydrocarbonate Company) will be permitted to explore the 10 to 17 billion cubic feet of gas in the reserve and to seek potential partners to invest in the project, government spokesperson Luis Covane told reporters.

"It's confirmed that there is gas in the region. The concession period for the study phase is eight years and we will give the rights to explore and produce gas to ENH for a period of 25 years," Covane said.

Maputo  - The death toll from a spell of bad weather in southern Africa had reached at least 25 by Tuesday as the mop-up after three days of storms that fanned wildfires got underway in South Africa, Swaziland, Mozambique.

In Mozambique, at least four people were killed, 20 injured and one was unaccounted for after a wildfire gutted dozens of houses in a village in central Manica province, state television reported Tuesday.

The dead were an elderly woman and her three grandsons, who were burned in their hut. Hundreds of other villagers were homeless after their shacks were engulfed by the flames.

Maputo - The death toll reached at least 25 by Tuesday as the mop-up after three days of storms that fanned wildfires got underway in South Africa, Swaziland, Mozambique.

In Mozambique, at least four people were killed and 20 injured after a wildfire gutted dozens of houses in a village in central Manica province, state television reported.

The dead were an elderly woman and her three grandsons, who were burned in their hut. Hundreds of other villagers were homeless after their shacks were engulfed by the flames.

The fire, which was still raging Tuesday and was eating into indigenous forest, was thought to have been started by a farmer who was clearing land to sow crops at the onset of spring.

Maputo  - The authorities of a Mozambican district bordering South Africa's famous Kruger National Park issued a red alert Monday over the threat of attack by wild animals after 50 kilometres of border fencing was destroyed.

Jose Mendonca, a member of the local government in Moamba district, told Radio Mozambique the government was trying to chase away animals that had broken through the fence into Mozambique.

Among the animals spotted roaming the area were lions, elephants, and other game.

Maputo  - Mozambique is set to become a coal exporter within two years, after finishing the reconstruction of a railroad to transport the fuel from the west of the country to Beira port, Mozambique's daily Noticias newspaper reported Monday.

National mining director Fatima Mamade was quoted by the paper as saying that the railway would be operational by 2010 and would carry "the first quantities of mineral coal for exportation available" from the Moatize deposit in Tete province.

Maputo  - Mozambique's exports of its famously succulent prawns fell 15 per cent in 2007 as a result of spiralling oil prices, the government said Thursday.

Exports of the shellfish fell from 92 million dollars in 2006 to 78 million dollars in 2007 as fishermen found it increasingly difficult to fork out for engine fuel, Ivone Lichucha of the Ministry of Fisheries told reporters in the capital Maputo.