MAPUTO,
Mozambique
Quirinde village was raided by armed attackers on Friday (26-02), and there are reports of deaths, according to local sources. On Saturday, another attack targeted the Namoto border post. Lusa News Agency reports.
An armed group invaded the
coastal village of Quirinde, northern Mozambique, on Friday night (26-02),
killing some residents, according to local sources quoted by the Lusa news
agency on Sunday.
The flowing (Saturday) night, the
nearby Namoto border post on the Rovuma River between Mozambique and Tanzania
was attacked, local sources told Lusa, with no further detail available.
Helicopters from Mozambican
forces were seen flying over the area in pursuit of the attackers and military
vehicles dispatched from the district headquarters, Palma, to the area,
sources said.
The attacks on Quirinde and
Namoto made this the second consecutive weekend of attacks in Quionga
administrative post, a coastal area which until now has had no history of
incursions by the armed groups terrorising Cabo Delgado.
Quionga can be accessed by sea
and by a dirt road, and is 20 kilometres north of Palma, the district
headquarters town that hosts the Rovuma natural gas project, Africa’s largest
private investment.
On the previous Friday, February
19, local sources reported an attack in Quionga costing the lives of four
people. The aggressors were repulsed on Saturday the 20th by Mozambican defence
forces, and fled north towards the border, the scene of this weekend’s
conflict.
Reports of the Quirinde
attack this Friday (26) have the attackers entering at about 6:00 p.m.,
surprising the population during dinner time. The group, armed with machine
guns and machetes, caused the mass flight into the bush usually associated with
such incursions.
Preliminary reports cited by Lusa
indicate seven people dying, three by beheading. But on Monday, ‘Carta de
Moçambique’ brings a report according to which the attack on Quirinde
“resulted in three deaths and several wounded” and the previous attack (19) on
the headquarters of the Quionga Administrative Post, near the border with
Tanzania,” would have caused four deaths..
Local sources report the usual
destruction of houses and looting of food and other products from shops, in
addition to the abduction of residents.
Quirinde is six kilometres east
of Quionga.
The Liberation Front of
Mozambique (Frelimo) claimed in parliament on Thursday that there was
“encouraging news” about the fight against armed groups operating in the
northern province of Cabo Delgado, and claiming widespread ‘cooperation’
against terrorism.
“We have encouraging news about
the growing neutralisation and liquidation of terrorists who are trying to
seize our wealth in Cabo Delgado,” said Sérgio Pantie, head of the Frelimo
bench in the Assembly of the Republic.
Armed violence in Mozambique’s
northern Cabo Delgado province, where Africa’s largest private multinational
investment – in natural gas – is developing, is causing a humanitarian crisis,
with more than 2,000 dead and 670,000 displaced. The violence erupted in 2017
and, post 2019, some of the raids were claimed by the Islamic State ‘jihadist’
group, but the source of the attacks remains under debate.
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