Mozambique: Two transport vehicles looted, burnt out by rebels close to gas megaproject – LUSA

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Mozambique: Two transport vehicles looted, burnt out by rebels close to gas megaproject – LUSA

8:14 CAT | 09 Dec 2020

FILE PHOTO - For illustration purposes only. [File photo: Pinnacle News]

Armed rebels set fire to two transport vehicles and on Tuesday closed the only road that still gives access to Palma, district of the Cabo Delgado natural gas megaproject, Mozambique, local sources told Lusa.

The two vehicles were on the dirt road, loaded with goods and passengers, in undetermined numbers, from Mueda, when the drivers noticed movement in Pundanhar, a village abandoned a month after an attack.

The village is about 50 kilometres from Palma.

The vehicles stopped and, as a precaution, the drivers gave the order for the occupants to flee to the bush.

When some returned, the vehicles had been looted and set on fire, one of the sources added.

Another driver who tried to drive down the road had reported hours before the road was blocked in the same area.

Another attack on transport vehicles in the vicinity of Pundanhar in September killed at least 24 people, buried by family and friends at the very site of the rebel incursion, for lack of security to collect the bodies.

Elsewhere in Palma district, on Monday a group of insurgents raided the village of Mute, less than 25 kilometres from the construction area of the natural gas megaproject led by French oil company Total.

The Defence and Security Forces (FDS) responded with the support of helicopters and resumed control of the village, while the population fled in a stampede to the village district headquarters in other villages, in search of security.

The attack caused several teams from the infrastructure works on the gas project to come to a standstill, for security reasons, on Tuesday and today.

Armed violence in Cabo Delgado, northern Mozambique, is causing a humanitarian crisis with around 2,000 deaths and 560,000 displaced people, without housing or food, mainly concentrated in the provincial capital, Pemba.

The province has been under insurgent attack for three years and some of the incursions have been claimed by the ‘jihadist’ Islamic state group since 2019.

Source: Lusa