(Adnkronos) – At least six people were killed by suspected terrorists in the Ancuabe district, in the Cabo Delgado province in northern Mozambique, local sources told the Lusa agency, confirming that three boys were kidnapped. According to the sources, the attack occurred last week, when the victims were working in the fields of a village in that district of the province. “Six people were killed in the village of Natocua, then the attackers left,” the sources reported.
In addition to the murders, the extremists kidnapped three boys, forcing them to show them the roads to Chiúre, a nearby district, where they attacked the administrative headquarters of Chiúre Velho, destroying a police station, beheading a man and putting thousands of people to flight in recent days. “They didn’t kill the boys: they just took them to show them the way, then they let them go,” the source reported.
The province of Cabo Delgado, located in the north of the country, is rich in gas and since 2017 has been facing an armed insurgency that has caused thousands of deaths and a humanitarian crisis, with over one million displaced people. The governor of Cabo Delgado, Valige Tauabo, admitted today, speaking with Lusa, that there has been a resumption of the activities of these groups over the past three months, more accentuated since the end of June, particularly in the south of the province, which in recent days has caused the displacement of thousands of people, who fled to Chiúre and to nearby Nampula.
At least one man was beheaded the day before yesterday in the administrative headquarters of Ocua, an episode that put the population to flight, community sources told Lusa. “They beheaded a man in the Pavala production area, in Ocua,” said a local source, from the district capital of Chiúre, thirty kilometers away from the attacked village, where various families have fled on foot in recent hours, while others have headed south, towards the nearby province of Nampula. Still others have taken refuge in local missions.
In this case, a victim was beheaded in Ocua, an administrative headquarters that separates the provinces of Cabo Delgado and Nampula. He was working on a farm when he was surprised by the rebels. “The population is fleeing, some people have fled to Chiúre and others are going to Namapa, in Nampula,” the same source reported.
Elements associated with the Islamic State today claimed an attack that took place in the village and at the Chiúre Velho police station, also in the south of the province of Cabo Delgado. Automatic weapons were used in the attack and material was stolen.
The claim, made through channels used for propaganda, is accompanied by a video in which the rebels, believed to belong to the Ahlu-Sunnah wal Jamaa (Aswj) group, appear while firing bursts of machine guns and breaking into the police station, claiming to have taken equipment, after setting fire to a car and “freeing Muslim prisoners”, while at least one person was beheaded, reportedly, in the center of the town.
Officially, agencies on the ground have counted at least 34,000 new internally displaced persons between 20 and 25 July alone due to new rebel attacks in the districts of Chiúre, Ancuabe and Muidumbe.
In Chiúre alone, the rising wave of refugees has reached, according to local estimates reported to Lusa, 3,500 families, distributed in the homes of relatives, but above all in two schools in the city, where classes were not held this week. More than 1,900 families are housed in the Coqueiros school, who since last Tuesday have started receiving humanitarian aid from UN agencies, in the same place where women cook with makeshift equipment and hundreds of children play almost normally, in a school without classes.
