By Our
Correspondent, PEMBA Zanzibar
Tanzania
Police force has confirmed that Mozambique based militants had crossed the
Mozambique-Tanzania border, invaded a village in Mtwara region and killed tens
of citizens capturing others.Inspector General of Police Simon Sirro
About 300 suspected Islamist militants
carried out an attack in Tanzania last week, the first such raid since Islamic
State-linked fighters began an insurgency in Mozambique three years ago.
The gunmen attacked Kitaya
village in the gas-rich region of Mtwara and retreated to Mozambique, Inspector
General of Police Simon Sirro told journalists Wednesday on Tanzania’s Indian
Ocean island of Pemba in Zanzibar, without giving more details. Kitaya is on
the banks of the Ruvuma river that separates the two countries.
Police have since arrested “both
locals (Tanzanian citizens) and foreigners in connection with the terrorist
incident,” he said.
Tanzania is working with regional
neighbours to “flush out the terrorists,” he said, without naming the group
behind the raid.
Islamic State claimed the October
14 attack, the killed 20 residents, two army officers and captured unknown
number of residents in the area according to SITE Intel Group, which monitors
jihadist activity.
Earlier, Tanzania government
denied to provide the information on the attack but has now come out to confirm
as the damage is unbearable.
Kitaya village |
Some of the gunmen involved in last week’s attack were Tanzanians who authorities believe were behind a string of murders in the coastal town of Kibiti in 2017, Sirro said.
According to military sources
cited by the newssheet, the terrorists entered Tanzania by sea, going up the
Rovuma river that forms the border between Mozambique and Tanzania.
The raiders burnt down houses,
destroyed an armoured vehicle and stole money and military equipment. The
terrorist network that calls itself "Islamic State" claimed
responsibility for the attack, and said it had killed three Tanzanian soldiers.
Videos and photographs circulated
by the terrorists on social media show them decapitating a man and throwing his
head onto a road. In the videos the murderers speak in Swahili (which is the
lingua franca of much of east Africa, including Tanzania), in Emakua (one of
the main languages of northern Mozambican), and in Kimwani (only spoken in a
few Cabo Delgado coastal districts).
One of the terrorists can be
heard saying ""We have nothing to do with the coming elections (in
Tanzania). We are here, and we are going to kill and leave his head on the
road. They are pigs. God is great".
In a second video, terrorists are
tearing up a poster of Tanzanian President John Magufuli, who is standing for a
second term of office. "Here is the face of Magufuli, which means we are
in his country. We are the Al-Shabaabs of Mozambique and we have come here to
teach you our doctrine".
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