The people of Homba, Mueda district, north of Mozambique’s Cabo Delgado province, left the village on Sunday for neighboring communities after receiving warnings of an unidentified terrorist group moving nearby, according to local sources.
“Yesterday [domingo] we didn’t sleep well in the Homba village because the terrorists were circulating in the Nambai area. It’s very close from Nambayaya to Homba,” he told Luce from the Nanhala community, the same source in the Local Forces that fight terrorists.
The population left the village of Homba on Sunday, heading for the neighboring communities of Nanhala and Chudi, following reports of the group’s approach.
The same source explained that the alleged insurgents were seen on the ground by loggers working in the forests of Nambayaya, on the border between the villages of Homba, Mueda and Mandela, Muidumbe district, on their way towards Homba, who managed to alert the population.
“Thanks to the loggers, the population became aware of this, but we don’t know where they went, according to them, they were mostly men, a few women and children,” he concluded.
Another source on the ground pointed to Luce the possibility that it was a group fleeing from Mukoho to the coast of Macomia, where the Defense and Security Forces (DSF) have intensified fighting in recent days.
“Our military colleagues are fighting and I think this is a reflection that they must be fleeing from there, and we are aware of our role here, which is to protect the returning population,” the same source said.
Some families showed Lusa their despair for the future in the village of Homba, from where they left when life was just beginning to return to normal, after almost six years of attacks.
“We have several shopping malls, some of us have already cleared the land for cultivation,” complained an elderly man, 67 years old, heard by Lusa.
The Homba community is more than 50 kilometers from the headquarters of the Mueda district, and in early 2022 the village was the target of insurgent attacks that forced the population to flee to the communities of Nanhala, Chudi, Chapa and Mueda – the headquarters.
The province of Cabo Delgado has been facing armed rebels for nearly six years now, with some of the attacks blamed on the Islamic State extremist group.
The insurgency has led to retaliatory military action since July 2021, supported by Rwanda and the Southern African Development Community (SADC), which have liberated areas near gas projects, but new attacks have taken place in the south of the region and in a neighboring province. Nampula.
The conflict in northern Mozambique has already displaced one million people, according to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), and killed about 4,000 people, according to the ACLED Conflict Registration Project.
This month, the Islamic State extremist group claimed responsibility for an attack on a Kathupa base in the hinterland of Macomia district in Mozambique’s Cabo Delgado province, saying 10 Mozambican SDF soldiers were killed.
The August 8 attack was stated in a statement released by the fundamentalist group’s Amaq agency, which said that seven other FDS soldiers were wounded and that it included photographs of the victims and seized materials whose authenticity could not be confirmed. . . .
The Mozambican authorities have not yet confirmed the occurrence of this incident.
Apparently, this was an attempt to reclaim this base, which had been seized by the SDF from terrorists since last year.
The President of the Republic of Mozambique said on 10 August that the FSF had expelled the terrorists from all the areas they occupied in the province of Cabo Delgado in the north of the country.
“Our defense and security forces, also assisted by local forces, continue to relentlessly pursue the terrorists, pushing them out of all areas they have occupied until 2021,” Filipe Nyusi said in Maputo at a reception in honor of his Kenyan counterpart, William Ruto, on a state visit in the country.
“Efforts are continuing to combat the terrorists who are attacking some areas of the province of Cabo Delgado, combining multilateral and bilateral cooperation from SADC through SAMIM. [Missão Militar da África Austral]and Rwanda, respectively,” said the President of Mozambique.
Author: Portuguese
Source: CM Jornal

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