Muzambique, SAEDNEWS, Nov. 10: Police say attackers beheaded and dismembered more than 50 people in northern Mozambique’s Cabo Delgado province over the past three days as violence in the area continues. The ISIL-linked fighters attacked several villages in the districts of Miudumbe and Macomia, killing civilians, abducting women and children and burning down homes, Bernardino Rafael, commander-general of Mozambique’s police said during a media briefing on Monday.
“They burned the houses then went after the population who had fled to the woods and started with their macabre actions,” said Rafael. Witnesses told local media the assailants herded residents onto the local football field in the village of Muatide where the killings were carried out. Security forces in gas-rich Cabo Delgado province have been fighting the armed group – which pledged allegiance to ISIL (ISIS) last year – since 2017.
But some analysts have questioned how serious the ISIL (ISIS) link really is, saying the root of the unrest may be poverty and inequality rather than religion. Little is known about the fighters who call themselves al-Shabab – although they have no known links to the group of that name operating in Somalia.
The unrest has killed more than 2,000 people since 2017 – more than half of them civilians, according to the US-based Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project. The violent attacks in Cabo Delgado have triggered a humanitarian crisis with more than 300,000 internally displaced people and 712,000 in need of humanitarian assistance, according to an Amnesty International report released last month (Source: AlJazeera).
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