Armed group kills two, kidnaps four people in Muidumbe district village – Lusa

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Armed group kills two, kidnaps four people in Muidumbe district village – Lusa

10:15 CAT | 09 Nov 2022

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

An armed group entered a village in Muidumbe district in Cabo Delgado province on Sunday night and kidnapped four people, including a pregnant woman. Two people died.

An armed group killed two people and is suspected of having kidnapped four others and taken them into a place of captivity already identified by the population in the interior of Cabo Delgado, local sources told Lusa this Tuesday.

The attack took place on Sunday afternoon in the village of Mandava, in Muidumbe district in the north of the province.
“Terrorists have attacked our village again, and that is sad, because we were returning,” said a resident of Mwambula, the former district headquarters town.

The alleged rebels broke into the village at 8:00 p.m. and kidnapped four people, including a pregnant woman.
From the village they went to Mavala, a low-lying area where the population maintains agricultural fields and which, according to the same source, is “completely occupied by insurgents”.

“No one goes by there (the alleged place of captivity), because they have been there for a long time, eating our food”, he complained.

Another source said that the attack caused some residents to leave their homes for Namacande, another district headquarter town about 20 kilometres away, and from there to other more distant locations.

“A lot of people are leaving. Some are going to Namacande, others to Mueda or Pemba, because these attacks show that there is still no security [here],” the source added.

Residents report that there has been military movement in the area since Sunday, to try to control the situation, but some local sources suggest that a more “permanent” deployment is necessary.

The village of Mandava, in the southern part of Muidumbe district, has been the target of armed attacks since 2019.

The province of Cabo Delgado has been plagued since 2017 by the actions of armed groups described by the authorities and external entities as terrorists.

The insurgency led to a military response a year ago with support from Rwanda and the Southern African Development Community (SADC), freeing districts next to natural gas projects in the province, but new waves of violence emerged in the south of the region and in neighbouring Nampula.

In five years, the conflict has displaced one million people, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), and killed around 4,000, according to the ACLED conflict registry project.

Source: Lusa