India's Prime Minister and President of Mozambique discuss defence and counter-terrorism
Screen grab: TV Sucesso
The president of Mozambique, Filipe Nyusi, said on Sunday that the various defence forces have made it possible to wipe out “practically all” the bases of the terrorist groups operating in Cabo Delgado, which are now limited to “wandering around in the bush.”
“The result of this combination of forces is surprising. They managed to disable the terrorists in all the towns and villages that had been occupied, destroyed practically all of the enemy’s fixed bases, turning them into nomads, and put many violent extremists out of combat, including some of their main leaders,” President Nyusi declared in Mueda, Cabo Delgado province, this Sunday (16-06).
Speaking at a ceremony commemorating the 64th anniversary of the Mueda Massacre, the head of state acknowledged the efforts of the Mozambique Armed Defence Forces, together with the Rwandan military, the mission of southern African countries and the Local Force of former national liberation struggle fighters, in the fight against the insurgent groups over the last six years.
“They are out there in the bush, but they no longer stay in one place because they are afraid of being found,” the president said of the insurgent groups in some districts of Cabo Delgado, renewing his appeal to the population “to continue to reinforce surveillance”.
Cabo Delgado has faced an armed rebellion since October 2017, with attacks claimed by movements associated with the extremist Islamic State group.
The last major attack, on the district headquarters of Macomia, took place on May 10 and 11 of this year, with around a hundred insurgents looting the town, causing several deaths and heavy fighting with the Mozambique Defence and Security Forces.
Residents of other districts in the province have reported the movement of groups of insurgents, who cause panic just when peasants are trying to harvest crops from their ‘machambas’ (cultivation plots) in the jungle, but without any record of clashes.
Still in Mueda, the head of state this Sunday inaugurated the rehabilitated local aerodrome, built in the 1960s and now “transformed into a civil and military airport” to receive mixed operations.
This rehabilitation brings the total number of runways in Cabo Delgado to four, including the international airport of Pemba, the provincial capital, approximately 260 kilometres from Mueda. At the ceremony, Filipe Nyusi challenged the transport sector to consider building a runway on Ibo Island in the Quirimbas archipelago, also in the province.
At the Mueda Massacre commemoration, considered one of the last acts of civil resistance to Portuguese colonialism before the start of the armed struggle in Mozambique, the head of state decorated 240 former combatants.
On June 16, 1960, a protest by the local population in Mueda was savagely put down by the authorities, with the loss of hundreds of lives.
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