Mozambique: More than 70 children still missing after armed attacks

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Mozambique: More than 70 children still missing after armed attacks

8:33 CAT | 05 Mar 2024

FILE - For illustration purposes only. [File photo: Lusa]

A total of 72 children are missing following the terrorist attacks of recent weeks in Chiùre district, Cabo Delgado province, in northern Mozambique, the local authorities announced on Monday.

“Following the flight of the population in Chiùre to Eráti, we have 61 families who have claimed their children, 29 have been reintegrated, leaving around 72,” said Albertina Ussene, provincial director of Gender, Children and Social Action in Nampula, the province where the district of Eráti is located, which is hosting the displaced from Chiùre.

Ussene was speaking during a meeting between the governments of the provinces of Nampula and Cabo Delgado to assess the situation of the communities affected by the incursions of armed groups in the region.

She said that efforts were underway to locate the missing children and reunite them with their families.

“We have started contacts with colleagues in Cabo Delgado” to locate the missing children and get them back to their families, she emphasised.

Albertina Ussene said that 67 pregnant women had fled the Chiùre villages affected by armed violence and had taken refuge in Eráti, where they receive psychosocial support and antenatal care.

After several months of relative normality in the districts affected by armed violence in Cabo Delgado, the province has been experiencing new movements and attacks by rebel groups for a few weeks, which have limited transport to a few points on the few tarmac roads that give access to various districts.

Official figures indicate that the new wave of attacks has forced 67,321 people to flee their homes, incursions justified by the Mozambican government as the result of the “movement of small groups of terrorists” who have left their bases in the south of Cabo Delgado, after a period of relative stability.

The province of Cabo Delgado has been facing an armed insurgency for six years, with some attacks claimed by the extremist group Islamic State.

The insurgency has led to a military response since July 2021, with the support of Rwanda and the Southern African Development Community (SADC), liberating districts near gas projects, but new waves of attacks have emerged in the south of the region.

The conflict has already displaced one million people, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), and caused around 4,000 deaths, according to the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED).

Source: Lusa