Mozambique attacks: Defence and Interior ministers travel to Mocimboa

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Mozambique attacks: Defence and Interior ministers travel to Mocimboa

2:29 CAT | 25 Mar 2020

File photo: Lusa

Mozambique’s ministers of defence and interior , Jaime Neto and Amade Miquidade, yesterday travelled to Mocimboa da Praia, in the north of the country, to assess the impact of the attack by an armed group that took over the village on Monday, announced the government today.

“A survey of the damage to public and private institutions, and to ascertain any possible loss of human life, is being carried out,” Filimão Suazi, Deputy Minister of Justice and spokesman for the Council of Ministers, told a press conference in Maputo.

According to the government, the attack created difficulties in the movement of people and goods for the “many hours” a firefight between the insurgents and defence and security forces lasted.

Yesterday, Suazi said, normal life was slowly resuming.

The province of Cabo Delgado has been the scene of multiple attacks by armed groups that international organisations classify as a terrorist threat, and which in two and a half years have killed at least 350 people and forced 156,400 people to abandon their homes and land in search of safety.

These attacks have occurred mainly in rural areas, but Mocimboa da Praia is one of the main urban centres in the region, the district seat, near the only paved road that crosses the province and boasting an aerodrome serving the natural gas megaprojects underway 90 kilometres to the north.

At dawn on Monday, according to police and reports from residents received by Lusa, armed insurgents occupied the streets of the village, set fire to public buildings and overran a defence and security forces barracks, where they hoisted their flag. A police communique confirmed reports from the population.

There were clashes throughout the day, and when the population finally left their homes again this morning, they found dead bodies lying in streets apparently now controlled by defence and security forces. The number of casualties has not yet been released.

Mocimboa da Praia is the village where, in October 2017, the first attack was carried out in this wave of violence that was born in radicalised Muslim communities and whose groups include residents. So far, they have never made claims or presented a leader – except for communiques by ‘jihadist’ group Islamic State, whose presence on the ground experts and authorities consider hardly credible.

Source: Lusa