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Beira[bAy´rA] Pronunciation Key, city (1997 pop. 397,368), capital of Sofala province, E central Mozambique, a seaport on the Mozambique Channel (an arm of the Indian Ocean), at the mouths of the PUngoE and BUzi rivers. A commercial center, the city grew (beginning in 1891) as the terminus of a railroad into the interior, and it handles the foreign trade of Congo (Kinshasa), Zimbabwe, Zambia, and Malawi as well as of Mozambique. Rail service was frequently halted by bombings during the war for Zimbabwean independence in the late 1970s and by the Mozambique National Resistance Movement in the early 1980s.
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