Cii Radio|Ayesha Ismail|06 June 2018| 21 Ramadaan 1439
Attackers hacked seven people to death with machetes and torched dozens of homes on Tuesday in northern Mozambique, a region that has suffered a spate of similar attacks in recent weeks.
Cabo Delgado province, which is expected to become the centre of a nascent natural gas industry after several promising discoveries, has seen a number of deadly assaults on both security forces and civilians since October.
“The bandits used machetes to kill the seven persons. We think this group is likely part of the [one] that beheaded 10 [people on] May 27,” police spokesman Inacio Dina told AFP news agency, referring to an attack last month in the same region.
The assailants, in a dawn raid on Tuesday, burned down 164 houses and destroyed four cars during the assault on the village of Naude in the Macomia district, he said.
‘Fragmented’
The attackers, described by locals and officials as “al-Shabab”, have no known link to the Somali armed group of the same name.
Police reinforcements were previously sent to the region to step up security.
Dina suggested the group might also have been linked to the nine “insurgents” killed by security forces over the weekend, who were subsequently found to be carrying assault rifles and Arabic-language documents.
“This group is very fragmented in small groups [and] they try to resist police attacks,” he said.
The May 27 bloodshed occurred in two small villages close to the border with Tanzania and not far from Palma, a small town gearing up to be the country’s new natural gas hub in Cabo Delgado.
Alex Vines, an analyst on Mozambique for the London-based Chatham House think-tank, said anticipation of a gas boom had increased the sense of inequality in Cabo Delgado.
“A series of recent studies have concluded that this has been one of the drivers for growing youth militancy – particularly among young men,” Vines said.
Two of those killed in the gruesome dawn raid were boys aged 15 and 16.
Source – Al Jazeera
