‘Multiplying’ numbers fleeing village targeted by armed men in Mozambique

MAPUTO, Mozambique

The administrator of Eráti district, in Mozambique’s Nampula province, the scene of an armed attack on Friday, said on Tuesday that the number of people fleeing Kútua, on the southern bank of the Lúrio river, bordering Cabo Delgado province, continues to “multiply” in the wake of the violence.

"The movement of displaced people is continuing,” said the administrator, Manuel Manusso. “It is multiplying; we are in a crisis situation.”

Manusso said that people are seeking refuge in the district’s main town, Namapa, where they are welcomed by family members, local leaders and the population in general.

He did not specify the number of people who had left Kútua, the village targeted in the attack, but said that local communities were “disturbed” by the situation.

The district, he stressed, was already hosting people who had fled the violence in neighbouring Cabo Delgado province since the start of armed attacks in October 2017.

"We have been receiving this wave of displaced people,” Manusso said. “Some have been here for two or three years.”

He said that the Defence and Security Forces are on the ground, trying to restore security and allow people to return home.

A police spokesman in Nampula, Zacarias Nacute, told Lusa on Monday that the attack on Eráti may have been carried out by the same armed groups that have been terrorising Cabo Delgado.

"There is the possibility of it being a terrorist attack carried out by that group of individuals who are in Cabo Delgado province,” he said.

This is the second time that provinces neighbouring Cabo Delgado have been the target of attacks similar to those that have been happening there – and where it also remains unclear who precisly is the protagonist of the violence.

In December 2021, there were similar suspicions regarding attacks in parts of Niassa province bordering Cabo Delgado.

Cabo Delgado province is rich in natural gas but has been terrorised since 2017 by armed violence, with responsibility for some attacks claimed by a local affiliate of extremist group Islamic State.

The attacks prompted a military response, since last year aided by forces from Rwanda and the Southern African Development Community (SADC), which has liberated districts near natural gas projects but seen a new wave of attacks in other areas to the south, closer to Pemba, the provincial capital.

Around 800,000 people have been internally displaced by the conflict, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), and some 4,000 have been killed, according to the conflict registration project ACLED.

It is estimated that half of the affected population are children and young people no older than 20, reflecting the country’s age pyramid. - Lusa