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Mozambique town deserted as Islamic State group claims control
PEMBA, Mozambique, March 29, 2021 (BSS/AFP) – The key northern
Mozambique town of Palma was all but deserted on Monday, its residents
fleeing by road, boat or on foot as the Islamic State (IS) group
claimed control after a prolonged onslaught.
IS-linked militants attacked the town on Wednesday, escalating an
insurgency that has spread bloodily across northern Mozambique since
2017.
Dozens of people, according to the IS and the authorities, were
killed in what witnesses describe as a coordinated attack, and an
unknown number were still missing.
It is the closest raid yet to a multi-billion-dollar gas project
being built on a peninsula just 10 kilometres (six miles) away, by
France’s Total and other energy giants.
“The caliphate’s soldiers seized the strategic town of Palma,” IS
said in a statement posted on its Telegram channels.
It claimed its offensive aimed at military and government targets,
killing dozens of troops and “members of Crusader states,” its term
for Western nationals.
The town of 75,000 people in Cabo Delgado province was all but
emptied of its population, said civil society activist Adriano
Nuvunga.
“The violence has ceased, but it is believed some of the insurgents
have pulled back and some are still around in hiding,” he told AFP.
Witnesses said scores of fighters had sneaked into the town ahead
of the attack.
“The attackers arrived a few days earlier and hid in the homes of
locals whom they paid,” said one Palma resident, speaking from Mueda,
where he had taken refuge.
“The attacks started along the main roads to Palma,” he said.
As police rushed out to try repel the invaders, the fighters inside
the town mounted their own attack, according to witnesses.
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– Struggle to survive –
Many survivors said they had walked for days through forest to seek
refuge in Mueda, 180 kilometres (112 miles) to the south, where they
arrived limping on swollen feet.
“Many people fell from fatigue and were unable to continue walking,
especially the elderly and children,” said one escapee in Mueda who
did not wish to be named.
Some survivors fled to the gas project site, from where they are
being sent to the regional capital Pemba via boat.
The government said dozens were killed in the militants’ attack,
including seven people caught in an ambush during an operation to
evacuate them from a hotel where they had sought refuge.
A South African is among those killed, his family said.
“Attacks started shortly after a large ship with food had just
arrived,” one escapee told AFP via an online message, referring to
food aid deliveries to the farthest northern coastal town.
“They attacked the city and brought trucks to carry the food.”
Witnesses told AFP they first targeted banks and the police station
before spreading across town.
– Boatloads –
Thousands of escapees were arriving on boats on Monday in Pemba,
the provincial capital around 250 kms to the south, according to
sources there.
International aid agency sources said between 6,000 and 10,000
people were waiting to be evacuated.
The attack forced expatriate workers and locals to seek refuge
temporarily at a heavily guarded gas plant located on the nearby
Afungi peninsula.
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“A significant number of civilians rescued from Palma are also
being transported to Afungi site, where they receive humanitarian and
logistical support,” side Total in a statement.
Sea Star, a large passenger vessel, arrived in Pemba on Sunday with
around 1,400 people, mostly workers including Total employees.
Pemba is already packed with hundreds of thousands of other people
displaced by the Islamist insurgency, which has uprooted nearly
700,000 from their homes across the vast province.
The latest attack “will unleash a new onslaught of displaced
people,” said Chance Briggs of the British-based charity Save the
Children.
The defence ministry said late Sunday the security forces had
“reinforced their operational strategy” to contain the attacks and
restore normality in Palma.
In Portugal, Prime Minister Antonio Costa said his government was
monitoring the situation “great concern,” adding that he had been in
touch with President Filipe Nyusi.
– Ruthless campaign –
The violent, calculated raid broke a three-month hiatus in Islamist
attacks widely attributed to counter-insurgency tactics and the
January-March rainy season.
Although the extremists launched their campaign in 2017, experts
say they began mobilising a decade earlier as disgruntled youths
started to practise a stricter form of Islam, upset over locals
drinking alcohol and entering mosques dressed in shorts and shoes.
Their bloody campaign has claimed at least 2,600 lives, half of
them civilians.
The insurgents are known locally as al-Shabaaab, although they are
not believed to have links with the Somali jihadist organisation by
that name.
The US State Department this month said the group reportedly
pledged allegiance to IS in April 2018. It named its leader as Abu
Yasir Hassan, and blacklisted him.
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