Africa-Press – Mozambique. Mozambican President Filipe Nyusi said that the attack on the headquarters of the Mozambican district of Quissanga on Saturday aimed to “create panic”, noting that the rebel group is being pursued by government forces.
“They come in, shoot and create panic. (…) So they went there [to Quissanga] and went in. Then they went to a tent to get 15 bags of various products,” Filipe Nyusi told a press conference in Maputo summarising his working visit to Algeria.
An armed group on Saturday attacked and looted the headquarters of Quissanga district, which was among those most affected by the terrorist incursions that have plagued the province of Cabo Delgado since 2017, local sources told Lusa.
READ: Mozambique: Armed group loots Quissanga district headquarters – Lusa
The new incursion began around 08:00 a.m., when hooded, armed men entered the headquarters of Quissanga, a district located in the centre of the province, just over 100 kilometres from the provincial capital, Pemba.
According to Filipe Nyusi, the intention of the rebel groups is to “create panic”, in a context in which, according to the head of state, the rebels “no longer have the same capacity”.
“We are following this movement (…) the intention is to create panic. In fact, that’s what terrorism is: creating terror, creating fear and agitation (…) And that is what they are doing now because they no longer have the same capacity,” Filipe Nyusi added, without providing further details about victims of the attack.
“We were taken by surprise. The terrorists, in large numbers, entered and began looting goods from the stalls (commercial establishments),” a community source who fled the Quissanga headquarters shortly after the attack told Lusa.
Other reports from community members state that the group forced children to carry looted products, and seized local fishermen’s canoes to flee the area.
There are reports of families who left the area due to the attack by this group, which is suspected of having also carried out an incursion in Mussomero on Friday, just over six kilometres from Quissanga.
“They spent the whole night in Mussomero,” another local source told Lusa.
#Mozambique
We must not judge the behavior of local communities too harshly. They find themselves ensnared in a volatile situation where ‘collaboration’ often becomes the sole means of securing income and averting potential imminent attacks. This situation is inherently zero-sum. https://t.co/BKjBpEu1pU
— Jasmine Opperman (@Jasminechic00) March 2, 2024
After several months of relative normality in the districts affected by armed violence in Cabo Delgado, the province has been registering, for a few weeks now, new movements and attacks by rebel groups, which have limited circulation to some points on the few paved roads that give access to several districts.
Official data indicate that the new wave of attacks as a result of the movements forced 67,321 people to flee their homelands, incursions justified by the Mozambican executive as a result of the “movement of small groups of terrorists” who left their barracks towards the south of Cabo Delgado, after a period of relative stability.
Cabo Delgado province has been facing an armed insurgency for six years, with some attacks claimed by the extremist group Islamic State.
The insurgency has led to a military response since July 2021, with the support of Rwanda and the Southern African Development Community (SADC), liberating districts near gas projects, but new waves of attacks have emerged in the south of the region.
The conflict has already displaced one million people, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), and caused around 4,000 deaths, according to the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED).
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