An armed group killed two people and is suspected of having kidnapped four others and taken them to captivity identified by the population in the interior of Cabo Delgado, northern Mozambique, local sources told Lusa today.
The attack took place on Sunday afternoon in the village of Mandava, in the district of Muidumbe, in the north of the province.
“Terrorists have attacked our village again and that is sad because we were returning,” said a resident in Mwambula, the former district headquarters.
The alleged rebels broke into the village during the night, at 20:00 (18:00 in Lisbon) and kidnapped four people, including a pregnant woman.
From the village they went to Mavala, a low-lying area where the population maintains agricultural fields and which, according to the same source, is “completely occupied by insurgents”.
“No one passes” in the alleged captivity, “because they have been there for a long time, they are eating our food” from the cultivated fields, he lamented.
Another source said that the attack caused several people to leave their homes and then to another district headquarters, Namacande, about 20 kilometers away, and from there to other more distant locations.
“There are a lot of people leaving and some are going to Namacande, others to Mueda or Pemba, because these attacks show that there is still no security”, he added.
The population reports that, since Sunday, there has been a military movement in the area to try to control the situation, but some local sources suggest that a “permanent” team would be necessary.
The village of Mandava, in the southern part of the district of Muidumbe, has been the target of armed attacks since 2019.
Cabo Delgado province has been terrorized by armed violence since 2017, with some attacks claimed by the Islamic State extremist group.
The insurgency led to a military response a year ago with support from Rwanda and the Southern African Development Community (SADC), liberating districts next to the gas projects, but new waves of attacks emerged in the south of the region and in neighboring province of Nampula.
In five years, the conflict has displaced one million people.
