Islamist insurgency - The African Mirror

Mar

2021

Thousands displaced by violence in Mozambique gas town

MANUEL MUCARI PORTUGAL will send soldiers to Mozambique to help train the armed forces in its former colony, where authorities battling an Islamist insurgency searched for tens of thousands of civilians who fled an onslaught on the northern coastal gas town of Palma. Many of those fleeing are believed to have scattered into dense surrounding forest or to have attempted to escape by boat when Palma came under attack on Wednesday, aid workers told Reuters. Some waded out to sea to hide, one survivor told Reuters. Mozambique's government has confirmed dozens of deaths, including at least seven who died when…

Mar

2021

By The African Mirror

‘Militants behead children as young as 11’

NEWS

CHILDREN as young as 11 are being beheaded in Mozambique, UK-based aid group Save the Children said yesterday, as part of an Islamist insurgency that has killed thousands and forced many magnitudes more from their homes. Save the Children said it had spoken to displaced families who described "horrifying scenes" of murder, including mothers whose young sons were killed. In one case, the woman hid, helpless, with her three other children as her 12-year-old was murdered nearby. "We tried to escape to the woods, but they took my eldest son and beheaded him," the 28-year-old, who Save the Children called…

Jan

2021

By The African Mirror

Intensifying Islamist insurgency in Mozambique drives humanitarian crisis

NEWS

MORE than half-a-million people have fled their homes due to an Islamist insurgency in northern Mozambique, and the violence and humanitarian crisis will worsen without international help, according to United Nations officials. "If nothing is done soon, we won't have only 535,000 displaced people. We won't have only 2,000 people killed by the conflict, but tens of thousands," said Valentin Tapsoba, regional director for the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR). The displaced people were in a dire situation, with overcrowding, malnutrition and a lack of essentials including food and water, the officials said in an online news briefing. Insurgents staged…

Nov

2020

By The African Mirror

Mozambique, Tanzania to launch joint operations against insurgents

NEWS

MOZAMBIQUE and Tanzania are to launch joint operations to combat an Islamist insurgency under an agreement that will also see some 500 suspected insurgents extradited, according to Mozambique's state-owned newspaper Noticias. The three-year-old insurgency is concentrated in Mozambique's northernmost province of Cabo Delgado, separated from Tanzania by the Rovuma River and home to gas developments worth $60 billion. In October, however, it spilled across the border when some 300 insurgents attacked a Tanzanian village. Many of the insurgency's recruits are also thought to come from Tanzania. Noticias said the agreement would see the two countries launch joint operations in Mozambique…

Sep

2020

By The African Mirror

Mozambique asks EU for help in tackling insurgency

NEWS

MOZAMBIQUE has asked the European Union for support in tackling a wave of militant attacks in the country's north by rebels with links to Islamic State, a conflict that has raised fears for stability and security in southern Africa. The Islamist attacks in Cabo Delgado province date to 2017 but the violence has gathered pace this year, with insurgents seizing important towns for brief periods and hitting military and other key targets. The Portuguese news agency Lusa said on Tuesday Mozambique had written to EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell to ask for help in training its armed forces to…

Sep

2020

By The African Mirror

Nigeria to deliver aid by air in conflict-hit northeast

NEWS

NIGERIA’S government plans to deliver humanitarian aid supplies by air to people in remote communities in parts of the northeast that have been ravaged by the decade-long Islamist insurgency spearheaded by Boko Haram. The insurgency, which since 2009 has killed around 35,000 people and forced two million people to flee their homes, has spawned one of the world's worst humanitarian crises. Seven million people need some form of aid, the United Nations estimates. Photo: Wikimedia Commons Humanitarian affairs minister Sadiya Umar Farouk on Sunday told reporters in Maiduguri, capital of the conflict-ravaged Borno state, that Nigerian Air Force helicopters and…