Mozambique: Fighting displaces more than 723,000 in north, centre – government

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Mozambique: Fighting displaces more than 723,000 in north, centre – government

9:37 CAT | 20 Apr 2021

FILE - Newly arrived Palma survivors register in Pemba, Cabo Delgado, on April 14, 2021. [File photo: Twitter / @IOM_Mozambique]

The Mozambican government said this Tuesday that more than 723,000 people had been displaced from their homes by armed attacks in the north and centre of the country. This number had been ascertained by Sunday.

Spokesman Filimão Suaze said that 714,136 people had been forced to flee armed violence in the northern province of Cabo Delgado, and 8,726 had fled armed attacks in the central region.

The cabinet spokesman updated the number of displaced due to armed violence in a press conference at the end of the weekly meeting on Tuesday (20).

Of the total number of displaced persons ascertained until Sunday, 331,391 are children, said Filimão Suaze.

The displaced have fled to other parts of Cabo Delgado and the provinces of Niassa and Nampula in the north, Zambézia, Sofala and Manica in the centre and Inhambane in the south.

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 700,000 displaced people according to the United Nations.

The most recent attack was on 24 March against the town of Palma, causing dozens of deaths and injuries.

The Mozambican authorities regained control of the town, but the attack led oil company Total to abandon indefinitely the site of the gas project scheduled to start production in 2024 and which many of Mozambique’s expectations of economic growth in the next decade are anchored on.

In the central region, Junta Militar, a splinter group of the Mozambican National Resistance (Renamo), the main opposition party, is contesting the leadership of the organisation and the conditions for demobilisation arising from the peace agreement and is blamed by the authorities as being responsible for armed attacks in the area that have killed at least 30 people since 2019.

Source: Lusa