Mozambique: One dead and students reportedly kidnapped in Metuge – Lusa

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Mozambique: One dead and students reportedly kidnapped in Metuge – Lusa

9:18 CAT | 06 Mar 2024

Map: UN OCHA

A group of terrorists today invaded the community of Pulo, Metuge district, in the Mozambican province of Cabo Delgado, causing at least one death and kidnapping students, which led to the population fleeing, local sources told Lusa.

The attack began at around 09:00 local timeand continued throughout the afternoon, resulting in, in addition to the death, nine students from the local secondary school being kidnapped.

“They entered in the morning, started shooting, killed an old man who was coming from the machamba [agricultural field] and kidnapped a number of nine students who were leaving Metuge secondary school,” said a source from the district headquarters of Metuge, where he took refuge .

The kidnapped students were returning to their villages after classes.

“They were leaving the school, heading towards Chauli, others towards Nacuta and Pulo, but they didn’t arrive”, reported the same source.

The insurgents set fire to several of the population’s homes, another source of the population told Lusa: “They burned down many houses, all in Pulo and I don’t know if they didn’t reach other communities. Because Pulo, Nacuta and Ponto A are neighbouring communities.”

The populations of Pulo, Nacuta, Ponto A and Chauli have, in the last few hours, abandoned their communities towards the district headquarters town of Metuge, approximately 30 kilometres away, where they seek refuge, the majority fleeing with children.

“They are arriving, the situation is really difficult and they are all with children and pregnant women. It’s sad to see”, lamented a source from Metuge, where he welcomed his wife’s family.

The presence of the Defence and Security Forces now fuels expectations among residents.

“A lot of soldiers passed by, I think the situation could return to normal,” said another community source.

After several months of relative normality in the districts affected by armed violence in Cabo Delgado, the province has been registering, for a few weeks now, new movements and attacks by rebel groups, which have limited circulation to some points on the few paved roads that give access to several districts.

The new wave of terrorist attacks in Cabo Delgado, in northern Mozambique, left 99,313 people displaced in February, according to an estimate released this week by the International Organization for Migration (IOM), mainly (62%) children (61,492).

The Mozambican Minister of National Defense, Cristóvão Chume, confirmed on February 29 attacks by insurgents in four districts of Cabo Delgado province, but assured that this is not a “recrudescence” of terrorist activities in the north.

“I want to say that this is not what is happening, because if that were actually the case, we would be saying that there are districts or district headquarters that are occupied, with no access for the population. What happened is that there are small groups of terrorists who left the their barracks, there in the Namarussia area – which we have said is their base -, went further south, attacked some villages and created panic”, said Cristóvão Chume.

The government official, who was speaking to journalists in Maputo, after a meeting with a high-level mission from the European Union, assured that the situation in Cabo Delgado “remains stable, despite the latest events in the south of the province”.

“As we know, some villages in the districts of Quissanga, Metuge, Ancuabe, Chiùre, suffered some attacks, which led to a displacement of the population further south, to the province of Nampula, and also to other districts of Cabo Delgado”, he acknowledged.

According to the Minister, it is necessary to invest in development programs to “minimize the risk of radicalization” and “prevent the re-emergence of terrorism”.

Still, he warned: “We do not mean to say that there are no incidents of terrorism, yes there are. And we will continue to fight, but what happened in the past will not happen again. We are firm in this, but we will watch situations like these that happened in Chiùre, in Metuge, and other areas, where there are some attacks that we cannot avoid”.

Source: Lusa