S.A troops in Mozambique to evacuate South Africans

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa

The South Africa National Defence Force (SANDF) has sent troops to repatriate South Africans from Mozambique.

President Cyril Ramaphosa says soldiers are in Cabo Delgado trying to evacuate citizens.

One South African has been confirmed dead following an attack on the town of Palma.

 Ramaphosa was speaking at a wreath-laying ceremony organised by the ANC at the gravesite of struggle stalwart Winnie Madikizela-Mandela at Fourways Memorial Park in Johannesburg.

Dozens of civilians were killed, including one South African, in Palma where a major gas project worth an estimated $60 billion (R900 billion) was being built by France’s Total and other energy companies.

Total suspended operations at the facility that is located just a dozen kilometres from Palma.

International aid agency sources said between 6,000 and 10,000 people were waiting to be evacuated to safety following the raid on Palma.

The attack forced expatriate workers and locals to seek refuge temporarily at a heavily guarded gas plant located on the Afungi peninsula — 10 kilometres from Palma, on the Indian Ocean coast south of the Tanzanian border.

The armed attackers fired on civilians in their homes and on the streets “as they tried to flee for their lives”, according to Human Rights Watch.

The violent, calculated raid broke a three-month hiatus in Islamist attacks widely attributed to counter-insurgency tactics and the rainy season from January through March.

Although the extremist fighters launched their campaign in 2017, experts say they had begun mobilising a decade earlier as disgruntled youths starting to practise a different type of Islam, drinking alcohol and entering mosques dressed in shorts and shoes.

The violence has now taken root and claimed at least 2,600 lives, half of them civilians, according to the US-based data-collecting agency Armed Conflict Location and Event Data (ACLED).

“We are extremely concerned about the impact that this new outbreak of violence is having on already very vulnerable people who have been affected by years of conflict,” said medical charity MSF.