Mozambique: Displaced persons die on boats before reaching Pemba – NGO

Login

Register

http://www.clubofmozambique.com/

Mozambique: Displaced persons die on boats before reaching Pemba – NGO

9:29 CAT | 27 Oct 2020

File photo: Plataforma Media

At least two people died over the weekend during boat trips fleeing armed violence in Cabo Delgado. Local sources told Lusa that 9,695 displaced persons arrived on the Pemba beaches between the 16th and 25th October (Sunday).

The two victims, a man and an 18-year-old girl, died during the trip to Pemba on Saturday and Sunday respectively, Manuel Nota, director of the Catholic humanitarian organisation Caritas in Pemba, told Lusa.

“The girl lost her life two miles from Pemba. They could already see the city, but she couldn’t make it. She had diarrhoea and vomiting,” Manuel Nota explained.

To escape the armed conflict, people travel for three to four days at sea without food or water, in wooden boats carrying 40 to 70 people, bound for the beaches of Pemba, the provincial capital of Cabo Delgado.

“The boats are not powered, they depend on the wind. If they had had an engine, they might have reached the shore before she lost her life,” Nota added.

“These boats have no sanitary provision whatsoever, it is not a cruise. People arrive hungry, dehydrated, in inhuman conditions,” Osman Yacob, a businessman and spokesperson for the Islamic Community, says.

The other casualty, a man of unknown age, was already unwell when he embarked in Pangane, Mucojo administrative post, Macomia district.

According to data cited by Lusa, a total of 175 boats arrived between the 16th and the 25th of October, carrying 9,695 IDPs from islands in the province. Of these, the majority (4,128) are children, with 3,232 women and 2,335 men.

Those arriving by boat are helped on arrival to find family or friends who can accommodate them, but many stay on the beach in the open before being taken to the Metuge IDP camps, near Pemba.

Of the approximately 300,000 displaced persons that the conflict in Cabo Delgado has so far given rise to, 86,000 are currently accommodated in the provincial capital by families whose resources are already stretched, while another 51,000 are in the Metuge IDP camps.

The province of Cabo Delgado, northern Mozambique, has been the scene of armed attacks for three years by insurgents classified as terrorists. Estimates of the number of deaths range from 1,000 to 2,000.

Source: Lusa