Mozambique: 123,000 pupils affected by terrorism in Cabo Delgado – AIM

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Mozambique: 123,000 pupils affected by terrorism in Cabo Delgado – AIM

6:01 CAT | 09 Jan 2022

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

Terrorist attacks in the northern Mozambican province of Cabo Delgado affected about 123,000 primary and secondary school pupils during the 2021 school year, according to the Ministry of Education.

Interviewed by AIM, the Ministry spokesperson, Gina Guibunda, said that the attacks, which began in October 2017, have resulted in the destruction of 43 schools, 104 classrooms, 30 administrative blocks and five buildings of district education services.

Guibunda said the terrorists have murdered eight teachers – four in Mocimboa da Praia district, and one each in the districts of Muidumbe, Palma, Macomia and Palma.

The terrorist raids have mostly affected the northern districts of Cabo Delgado, Guibunda said that in the provincial capital, Pemba, and in the districts in the south of the province, 948 primary schools and 78 general secondary education schools are operating normally.

In 2021, over a million pupils in Cabo Delgado were enrolled in school, but less than a million actually attended classes. “That is because families were displaced, not only within the province, but also into neighbouring provinces”, said Guibunda.

Some pupils, accompanied by their parents, had gone into Nampula and Niassa provinces, and Guibunda said many had been integrated into schools in district capitals in those provinces.

As for the distribution of free school textbooks, Guibunda said the district education services have been instructed to make the books available to all primary school pupils from the zones of conflict, in an attempt to ensure that they can assimilate the school material before the end of the school year.

Guibunda added that about 1,600 teachers from areas hit by terrorism have also been incorporated into schools in peaceful districts.

“They were displaced people, they presented themselves at the district capitals, and after some time they were given jobs”, she said.

At the beginning of 2021, 385 schools in Cabo Delgado were not operating because of terrorist activities, but in the second half of the year, said Guibunda, 166 of them were able to re-open because of improved security, following offensives against the terrorist groups by the Mozambican defence and security forces, supported by their allies from SADC and Rwanda.

Meanwhile, reports have reached Maputo that a terrorist commander, named as Amade Muahamed Daude, has been captured by the Defence Forces and the SADC Mission in Mozambique (SAMIM) in Macomia district,

Daude was born in Tanzania to a Tanzanian father and a Mozambican mother. When he was 16 years old, he want with his patents to live in Mozambique, first in Macomia, and later in Mocimboa da Praia.

He was recruited by the jihadists in 2016, and was sent for military training in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and later in Kenya and Tanzania, where he became steeped in Islamic radicalism. He returned to Mozambique in September 2017 and participated in the first terrorist attacks against police facilities in Mocimboa da Praia, on 5 October that year.

In 2021, he was commanding terrorist units in Macomia which came under attack from Mozambican and SAMIM forces. He fled northwards and he, and some of his men, were captured at Namoro, on the south bank of the Rovuma river, as they were trying to cross into Tanzania.

Source: AIM