Watch: Police commander-general speaks in Muidumbe district headquarters village, retaken from terrorists

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Watch: Police commander-general speaks in Muidumbe district headquarters village, retaken from terrorists

4:05 CAT | 20 Nov 2020

Screen grab: TVM

The commander-general of the Police of the Republic of Mozambique (PRM), Bernardino Rafael, said yesterday that the Defence and Security Forces had retaken the village headquarters of Muidumbe district, the region from where reports of murders, including beheadings, have emerged.

“We have completed one stage of our work, but this is not the end,” Bernardino Rafael said, quoted by Mozambique Television (TVM), without giving details about the scenario in that part of Cabo Delgado.

Watch the TVM report below.

The television channel indicated in a footnote that 16 rebels were killed.

“Our mission of pacifying our country is progressive and continuous. The President of the Republic has been told of the re-occupation,” Rafael added.

Armed rebels who have been attacking Cabo Delgado since 2017, with intensified intensity since the beginning of this year, made a two-week onslaught on the district, and fleeing survivors reported to Lusa the death of family members, as well as the loss of homes and other property.

The website Pinnacle News, which presents itself as a network of community communicators, reported that there were several beheadings on a football field in the Muidumbe village of Muatide, generating reactions of dismay around the world.

In the authorities’ first statements about the situation in Muidumbe district, the PRM commander-general said insurgent groups at the site were “weakened” by the government onslaught.

“The terrorists are in trouble and have nothing to eat,” he explained, mentioning that the FDS destroyed supplies including six sacks of rice and more than 350kg of dried fish looted from the population and hidden by the rebels.

Armed violence in Cabo Delgado is causing a humanitarian crisis with an estimated 2,000 deaths and 500,000 people displaced, mainly to the provincial capital, Pemba, without adequate food or housing.

Source: Lusa / TVM