Zimbabwe’s new president has implicated a ruling party faction loyal to Robert Mugabe’s wife in a bomb attack that nearly killed him over the weekend.

Significantly raising the political temperature ahead of a crucial election next month, Emmerson Mnangagwa claimed that rivals who had hoped to install Grace Mugabe as president may have been behind Saturday’s apparent assassination attempt.

Renewing a vicious rivalry with the former first lady, Mr Mnangagwa said he suspected Mrs Mugabe’s G40 faction of being behind the attack because it opposed the democratic turn the country had taken under his stewardship.

“The people who are aggrieved about the new dispensation are the G40,” he told the BBC. “That is the logical and reasonable conclusion one may make.”

Two people were killed after a bomb exploded as Mr Mnangagwa left the podium during a rally by his ruling Zanu PF party in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe’s second city.

More than 40 others were wounded, among them the wife of Constantino Chiwenga, the general — now a vice president — who launched the military takeover that ousted Mr Mugabe and brought Mr Mnangagwa to power in November.