An armed group on Saturday attacked and looted the headquarters of the Mozambican district of Quisanga, which has been hit hard by the terrorist infiltrations that have plagued Cabo Delgado province since 2017, local sources told Lusa.
Mozambican President Filipe Nyusi said Saturday's attack on the headquarters of the Mozambican district of Quisanga was aimed at “creating panic,” noting that government forces were pursuing the rebel group.
“They come in, shoot, create panic (…) so they go there [Quissanga] They entered. “Then they went to a tent to get 15 bags of different things,” Philippe Nyusi announced at a press conference summarizing his mission to Algeria.
An armed group on Saturday attacked and looted the headquarters of the Mozambican district of Quisanga, which has been hit hard by the terrorist infiltrations that have plagued Cabo Delgado province since 2017, local sources told Lusa.
The new incursion began around 8:00 a.m. (6:00 a.m. in Lisbon) when hooded gunmen entered the headquarters of Quisanga district, located in the center of the province, 100 kilometers from the capital of Cabo Delgado (Pemba). )
According to Philippe Nyusi, the aim of the rebel groups is now to “create panic”, in this context, according to the head of state, the rebels “no longer have the same capacity”.
“We follow this movement (…) The aim is to create panic. In fact, that is what terrorism is: creating terror, creating fear and agitation (…) That's what they do now because they don't have the same ability,” added Philippe Niucci. Attack.
“We were taken by surprise. The terrorists entered in large numbers and started looting the tents (business establishments)”, a community member who left the Quisanga headquarters shortly after the attack began told Lusa.
Other reports from community members claim that the group took over local fishermen's boats to abandon the area and forced children to carry the loot.
There are reports of families fleeing the area after an attack by the group, which is suspected of carrying out another incursion on Friday in Musomero, six kilometers from Quisanga.
“They spent the whole night in Musomero,” another local source told Lusa.
After months of normalcy in districts affected by armed violence in Cabo Delgado, the province has been recording new movements and attacks by rebel groups for weeks. Permission should be given to several districts.
The movements resulted in a new wave of attacks that forced 67,321 people to flee their homelands, with the Mozambican administration justifying the incursions as the result of “the movement of small groups of terrorists” leaving their forces southward. Cabo Delgado, after a period of relative stability.
Cabo Delgado province has been battling an armed insurgency for six years, with the Islamic State group carrying out some attacks.
The insurgency has led to a military response since July 2021, backed by Rwanda and the Southern African Development Community (SADC), liberating districts near gas projects, but new attacks have emerged in the south of the region.
According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the conflict has already displaced a million people, and according to the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED), around 4,000 people have died.
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