Mozambique: Trucks carrying passengers ambushed near Pundanhar, Cabo Delgado – Lusa

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Mozambique: Trucks carrying passengers ambushed near Pundanhar, Cabo Delgado – Lusa

3:36 CAT | 13 Sep 2020

File photo: DW

Two open-body type vehicles carrying passengers an goods were attacked on Saturday in an ambush by an armed group in northern Mozambique, local sources told Lusa.

The vehicles were transporting people and goods from Palma to Mueda via a dust road when they were attacked near Pundanhar, some 40 kilometres after the village they had left from in the morning, according to reports from inhabitants in the area of the occurrence.

The dust road, which runs northwest and along the border with Tanzania, has been the only land link still used with relative safety to reach Palma, given that insurgent groups have made it risky to move south via the only asphalted road in Cabo Delgado. .

According to the same reports from yesterday, the shots of the attack on the vehicles were heard in the village of Pundanhar and attracted the attention of residents, who were investigating whether there were casualties resulting from the attack in which one of the vehicles was reportedly burned down.

There were survivors being assisted at the Nangade health centre and the driver remains unreachable, they add.

Military sources contacted by Lusa were unable to confirm the occurrence at the time, promising to give more information soon.

Palma is the district capital that is right next to the largest private investment in Africa: the mega project for the extraction of natural gas led by Total, currently under construction and scheduled to start production in 2024.

Cabo Delgado has been under an armed insurgency for three years, classified by the Mozambican government and international partners as terrorism, whose origin keeps being debated and which has grown this year, causing a humanitarian crisis with more than 1,000 deaths and 300,000 internally displaced persons [IDPs].

The attacks have taken place outside the area where the project is being implemented (area of project’s DUAT – Right to Use and Benefit from the Land), but some were registered a few tens of kilometres away.

Reports from residents of Pundanhar follow other reports throughout the week about the destruction of traditional houses, public services and goods elsewhere in the region.

On Thursday, residents of a village called Maputo, next to the paved road at the Olumbe administrative post – on the border between Palma and Mocímboa da Praia (to the south) – fled after an incursion by the insurgents.

On Tuesday, the population of Vamizi Island also started to flee after a similar invasion in which a resident was killed by the attackers.

According to what local sources told Lusa, a resident was shot down after saying that he recognised one of the insurgents as someone from Nampula, the provincial capital of Nampula province, 500 kilometres south where suspicion of recruiting for the insurrection has arisen.

According to the same sources, the insurgents arrived in Vamizi overnight in small sailing boats as if they were fishermen. The next day they prayed in a mosque and asked the population to leave the island.

They ended up burning houses and services, as well as some existing hotel infrastructure on the island.

Without details of the incidents, military sources told Lusa on Saturday that the actions in Cabo Delgado are centred on the reconquest of the coastal town of Mocímboa da Praia, which has been occupied by the insurgents for a month – a district capital with an airport, a small port with an area to unload cargo and which was already used for logistical support to the LNG megaproject.

The FDS regained control of the strategic crossing of Auasse [also spelt ‘Awasse’], said one of the Lusa sources. This junction is where the only paved road that traverses Cabo Delgado from north to south crosses with the road to Mueda, .

Source: Lusa