Bulawayo – A man who was in a Bulawayo supermarket that was raided by armed robbers this week threw a bottle of mayonnaise at one of them, it’s being reported.

The state-run Chronicle newspaper said the unnamed man, who was employed as a merchandiser, was at the back of Blesspark Supermarket in Mahatshula North suburb when the gang burst in on Wednesday around 7.30 pm.

The six masked men ordered customers to lie on the floor and told terrified till operators to empty the tills, the paper said.

Store supervisor Kanzara Mudeka was hiding behind a counter but the robbers located him and made him open the safe. The report said it was then that the merchandiser emerged from the back of the store and threw a bottle of mayonnaise at the attackers.

It hit one of them on the shoulder.The gang shot at the man but missed.

“They shot and narrowly missed him but they didn’t say a word. They just took the money and fled, leaving everyone lying on the ground,” Kanzara was quoted as saying. The gang got away with $1 200.

This is the second report of an armed gang raiding a Bulawayo store in less than a week.

A similar attack happened at the Cooland Supermarket in Nkulumane suburb on Saturday evening. In that incident, an employee was shot in the leg by one of a three-man masked gang. The gang got away with more than $1 100 US.

Zimbabwe is currently in the grip of serious cash shortages that the introduction of bond notes in November last year has done little to solve.

“What you should do is to remove some of the police from the roadblocks so that they patrol our neighbourhoods,” commented a Chronicle reader. – News24