About 500 protesters in Mozambique this week blocked a coal railway line in a dispute over housing with the Brazilian mining company Vale, police said Thursday.

Police in Tuesday's incident detained 14 of the protesters, who were angry about what they say is low-quality housing Vale built for them after they had to make way for its coal mine in the country's northwest.

The crowd barricaded the rail line and also the access road to their Cateme resettlement area, police commander Jaime Mapume said.

"They put up barricades on the railway with rocks and other things," Mapume told AFP.

Police later released the detainees, he said.

Vale opened the mine last May in Moatize district, planning to export at least 11 million tonnes of coal a year.

It moved around 980 families to make way for the $1.7-billion (1.3-billion-euro) mine. Most were taken to Cateme, where the company had built 750 houses, schools, a police station and a clinic.

The community has complained about the standard of the housing and accused the company of breaking its promises, said Mapume.

Vale spokeswoman Acucena Paul told AFP that responsibility for the settlement had since passed to the local government.

Local authorities said planned renovations had been delayed.

"The beneficiaries reported deficiencies of various degrees in the houses, especially cracks and fissures," the Moatize district administrator said in a statement.

Mozambican think-tank the Centre for Public Integrity in 2010 accused Vale of building sub-standard houses in the resettlement communities.