Children as young as 11 were beheaded in Mozambique’s northern province of Cabo Delgado, the UK-based charity Save the Children said on Tuesday as the humanitarian crisis escalated, with nearly 670,000 people displaced by the extremist uprising.
Save the Children said it had spoken to displaced families describing “scary scenes” of murder, including mothers whose young sons were killed.
In one case, the woman hid helplessly with her three other children when her 12-year-old was murdered nearby.
“That night our village was attacked and houses burned down”, the 28-year-old, who Save the Children called Elsa, is quoted as saying. “When it all started, I was at home with my four children. We tried to escape to the forest, but they took my eldest son and beheaded him. We could not do anything because we would also be killed.”
Another mother, a 29-year-old Save the Children call Amelia, said her son was only 11 when he was killed by gunmen. Reuters could not immediately reach Mozambique police or government spokesmen for comment.
Mozambique’s northernmost province, Cabo Delgado, has been home since 2017 to a daring uprising linked to the terrorist group Daesh, which has escalated dramatically in the past year.
While beheadings have always been a hallmark of the attacks, insurgents began regularly engaging the military in 2020 to capture and hold important cities. Brutality also continued, with massacres including the murder of about 52 people at one time in the village of Xitaxi in April.
In all, nearly 2,700 people on all sides have died in the violence, according to the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED), a consulting firm that tracks political violence. Nearly 670,000 people have been displaced, Save the Children said, according to a release carried out by Agence France-Presse (AFP).
The United Week declared last week that the Mozambique group was a foreign terrorist organization over its links to Daesh and said that the group reportedly promised it as early as 2018. Daesh claimed its first attack in Cabo Delgado in June 2019.
The US embassy in Mozambique on Monday said US special forces would train Mozambican marinas for two months, while the country also provided medical and communications equipment to help Mozambique fight the insurgency.
Amnesty International found earlier in March that war crimes were being committed by all sides in the conflict, with government forces also responsible for abusing civilians – a charge that the government has denied. Chance Briggs, the children’s director of the Save the Children Mozambique, said reports of attacks on children “hurt us to the core.”
“Our staff has been in tears when we hear the stories of suffering told by mothers in labor camps,” he said. “This violence must be stopped and displaced families must be supported as they find their stock and recover from the trauma.”
More than 50 people were beheaded on a football pitch in Cabo Delgado in November last year. Another incident occurred in April last year when dozens more were beheaded or shot dead during an attack on a village.
According to human rights groups, security forces have also committed human rights violations – including arbitrary arrests, torture and murder – during operations against extremists. Last week, the Biden administration identified Mozambique’s extremist rebels as a “foreign terrorist organization” and imposed extensive sanctions on the group, the Associated Press (AP) reported.
Authorities in Mozambique called for international support to quell the uprising. On Monday, representatives of the US Embassy in the capital Maputo said US troops would spend two months training soldiers in Mozambique, as well as providing “medical equipment and communications.” Following reports of abuse in the conflict, the brief US statement stressed that coaches will promote human rights.
“Violence must be stopped and displaced families must be supported as they find their stock and recover from trauma,” Briggs said.
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