Background Studies carried in Mozambique show that injuries are one of the 10 top leading causes of death in the country.

Objectives Provide baseline profile of injury mortality caused by guns.

Methods This is a cross-sectional study of all non-natural deaths recorded from 2000 to 2009 at The Forensic Medicine Services in Maputo Central Hospital. This data was abstracted from hand written autopsy reports, into 15 item- one page, standardised form. The data collection was designed in order to evaluate the following variables: gender; age divided into four groups (0–19 years old), (20–39 years old), (40–59 years old) and over 60 years old; socio-economic status and intentional death (homicide and suicide) as well as non-intentional death.

Results Over this period 12 732 autopsies have been done out of which 6% (n=764) were resulting in deaths caused by gun fire. The majority of victims were male 95.2% (n=727) and were also single 77.7% (n=594). We found out that the distribution by age groups were: (0–19 years old) 10.73%; (20–39 years old) 69.11%; (40–59 years old) 17.27% and over 60 years old 20%. Regarding the socio-economic status, we realised that the victims those worker for others were 40%, own business were 19%, unemployed/others were 31% and students were 10%. Almost (99%) of the case are related to homicides.