An armed group killed a village chief and his wife on Saturday in Cabo Delgado, northern Mozambique, different sources in the Murrameia community reported today.
The attack caused the flight of nearly 1,000 people, most of them children, according to data published today by the International Organization for Migration (IOM).
The village belongs to the administrative post of Hucula, in the district of Namuno, adjacent to the district of Montepuez, where 10 days ago an armed attack on a ruby mine forced the suspension of activities and the evacuation of workers.
Both districts are in the extreme southwest of Cabo Delgado, which until September was free of terrorists and which is closer to neighboring provinces (Nampula and Niassa) than to Pemba, the provincial capital, which is about 400 kilometers away.
“Around 15:00 [2:00 pm in Lisbon] we were surprised by a group that we thought were terrorists, because of the way they acted”, described a resident.
The group beheaded the village chief and his wife, set fire to the primary school and a tractor belonging to a local agricultural association, he said, causing the population to flee to the district headquarters.
“We left the village because they are violent. They killed our village chief and we don’t know what awaits us”, added the same source.
Another local source said that at least one child who walked away from his parents during the attack is missing.
The population of the surrounding villages also began to flee to the district headquarters.
The IOM issued an alert from the mechanism for the registration of displaced persons in Cabo Delgado, according to which 958 people left the areas of Hucula and Machoca on Saturday and Sunday for the district headquarters.
“Fear and confirmed attacks by armed groups were at the origin of the movement”, reads the alert, according to which there are 100 vulnerable displaced persons, including pregnant women, the elderly and minors separated from their families.
Of the total number of fleeing residents, 60% are children, he adds.
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, according to UNHCR, and around 4,000 deaths, according to the ACLED conflict registry project.
