Tanzania confirms Cabo Delgado islamist terrorists attack at border village

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

Militants based in Mozambique’s gas-rich northern Cabo Delgado province have killed more than 2,110 people since the insurgency begun and displaced 310,000 others, according to the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project, which tracks violence.

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".