Mozambique aviation authorities on Thursday displayed the suspected debris from missing Malaysian flight MH370 that was found this week by an American amateur investigator looking for the plane.

The president of Mozambique's Civil Aviation Institute (IACM), Joao de Abreu, held up the triangular piece to show to journalists, but insisted that speculation it belonged to the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 was premature.

Mozambique's opposition leader Afonso Dhlakama escaped unhurt when his convoy was hit by gunfire while returning from a rally in the central Manica province in what police said was crossfire.

Police said the bullets that struck three cars in his convoy were not aimed at the former rebel Renamo commander's convoy but targeted a motorist who had refused to stop at a road block. 

South African President Jacob Zuma apologized to Mozambicans Wednesday for a recent outbreak of xenophobic violence in which at least seven people died and hundreds of migrants were forced to flee their homes.

Speaking at the start of a two-day state visit to Maputo, Zuma said the attacks -- which included the murder of a Mozambican man captured by a press photographer -- "shocked us and disturbed us".

The death toll from a cholera epidemic in Mozambique that broke out after widespread flooding has risen by almost 50 percent in two weeks to 41, health officials said Monday.

And the number of new cholera infections has more than doubled over the past fortnight.

A cholera epidemic has killed 19 people in northern Mozambique following flooding that devastated the region, the government said Wednesday.

"We have counted 1,702 cases and 19 deaths in the Nampula, Niassa and Tete provinces," Lorna Gurjal, head of the health ministry's epidemiology department told AFP.

Two Portuguese nationals have been kidnapped in Mozambique's capital Maputo, their embassy said Thursday.

They were captured separately on Monday and Thursday, according to the Portuguese embassy's consular Gonçalo Gamos.

Floods that have ravaged northern and central parts of Mozambique have killed 159 people and affected nearly 160,000, a new report showed Monday amid fears that fresh rains could wreak more havoc in the coming days.

"There are now 158,000 victims," National Institute of Disaster Management spokeswoman Rita Almeida told Agence France-Presse.

The death toll from flooding in parts of Mozambique has risen to 117, with more than 157,000 people affected, official figures showed Monday.

The deaths in the center and north of the southern African nation were caused by "drowning, lightning strikes, or construction collapses caused by the floods," Rita Almeida of the Mozambican relief agency INGC told AFP.

The death toll from flooding in parts of Mozambique has risen to 71, the country's disaster management services said Monday.

"From the data collected up to last night (Sunday), the provisional toll of victims has risen to 71 since January 12," National Institute of Disaster Management spokeswoman Rita Almeida told AFP.

Mozambique's new President Filipe Nyusi was sworn into office on Thursday in a ceremony boycotted by the main opposition party, which has rejected the results of October's elections.

Nyusi's inauguration extended the ruling Frelimo party's nearly 40-year hold on power since the southern African nation won independence from Portugal.