Mozambique: Cabo Delgado in ‘state of emergency’ – governor | Watch

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Mozambique: Cabo Delgado in ‘state of emergency’ – governor | Watch

12:39 CAT | 14 May 2021

Photo: Conselho Executivo de Cabo Delgado on Facebook

The province of Cabo Delgado in northern Mozambique is facing an emergency in the face of a humanitarian crisis caused by armed violence, the region’s governor, Valige Tauabo, said on Thursday.

“Our province is in an emergency. It is not just some districts. It is the whole province that is in an emergency,” Tauabo said during the celebration of the end of Ramadan in Pemba, the provincial capital.

The governor celebrated the feast with displaced people from Palma district, who fled after the attack by armed groups on 24 March and are sheltering in the sports pavilion in the capital’s expansion zone – a space that on Monday was hosting 324 people, half of them children.

“They are not displaced to be forgotten. They are displaced until the situation in their districts is stabilised. As long as they are here or elsewhere in the province, they are in Mozambique. They are Mozambicans”, he said, in an appeal for solidarity with the affected population.

Tauabo also repeated an appeal repeatedly made by the authorities, addressed to the younger people: “Let’s discourage the young people who are being led astray”, recruited by rebel groups of as yet unknown origin, who have attacked the region.

The armed violence was also addressed by Sheikh Abdulcarimo Fadile, Islamic leader at the ceremony, condemning the attacks carried out by insurgents.

Watch the TVM report below.

Armed groups have terrorised Cabo Delgado since 2017, with some attacks claimed by the ‘jihadist’ group Islamic State, in a wave of violence that has led to more than 2,500 deaths according to the ACLED conflict registration project and 714,000 displaced people according to the Mozambican government.

An attack on Palma, near the gas project under construction, on 24 March caused dozens of deaths and injuries.

The Mozambican authorities announced they were controlling the town. Still, the attack led oil company Total to abandon the project’s site, which was scheduled to start production in 2024 and on which many of Mozambique’s economic growth expectations for the next decade are anchored.

Source: Lusa / TVM