Fierce struggle for control of Mozambique’s strategic northern city of Palma left beheaded corpses strewn in the streets on Monday with heavily armed rebels fighting army, police and private military equipment in several places.
Thousands are estimated to be missing from the city, which held about 70,000 people before the attack started last Wednesday.
The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attack on Monday, saying it was carried out by the Islamic State, the province of Central Africa, according to SITE’s extremist monitoring group.
The insurgency claimed that the rebels now control Palma’s banks, government offices, factories and army barracks, and that more than 55 people, including troops from Mozambique’s army, Christians and foreigners were killed. It gave no further details about the dead.
Earlier this month, the United States declared that Mozambique’s rebels were a terrorist organization and announced that they had sent military specialists to train the Mozambican military to fight them.
Palma is the center of a multi-billion dollar investment by Total, the French-based oil and gas company, to extract liquefied natural gas from offshore sites in the Indian Ocean. Gas deposits are estimated to be among the largest in the world, and investments from Total and others are reported to be $ 20 billion, one of the largest in Africa.
The battle for Palma forced Total to evacuate its large, fortified site a few kilometers outside the city.
Fighting spread across the city on Monday, according to Lionel Dyck, director of the Dyck Advisory Group, a private military company contracted with Mozambican police to help fight the rebels.
“There is fighting in the streets, in pockets all over the city,” Dyck told the Associated Press. The Dyck group has several helicopter gun ships in Palma that have been used to rescue captured civilians and to fight the rebels.
“My guys are in the air and they’ve engaged several small groups and they’ve engaged quite a large group,” Dyck said. “They have come into the fight to recover a couple of wounded police officers. … We have also rescued many people who were captured, 220 people last count. ”
He said the rescuers were being led to Total’s fortified site on the South African country’s Afungi Peninsula, where chartered flights flew far south to Pemba, the capital of Cabo Delgado province.
The rebels are well-armed with AK-47 automatic rifles, RPD and PKM machine guns and heavy mortar, Dyck said.
“This attack is not a surprise. “We expected Palma to be beaten the moment the rain stopped and the fighting season started, as it is now,” he said.
“It simply came to our notice then. They have had enough time to get their ducks in a row. They have a notch up in their abilities. They are more aggressive. They use their mortar. “He said that many wore black uniforms.
“There has been a lot of beheadings. Right up on day one, our guys saw the drivers of trucks bringing rations to Palma. Their bodies were by the trucks. Their heads were gone. ”
Dyck said it would not be easy for the Mozambican government to regain control of Palma.
“They must get enough troops to sweep through the city, go house-to-house and clean each one. This is the most difficult phase of warfare in the book, ”Dyck said. “It will be very difficult unless a competent force with good command and control has been established to resume the city. It can be done. But it will not be easy. ”
Without control of Palma, Total’s activities are jeopardized, analysts say.
The battle for Palma is similar to how the rebels seized the port of Mocimboa da Praia in August. The rebels infiltrated men into the city to live among the residents and then launched a triple attack. The fighting continued for more than a week until the rebels controlled the city center and then it is harbor. The city, about 50 miles south of Palma, is still occupied by the rebels.
UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric condemned the violence in Palma, which he allegedly killed dozens of people, “including some who tried to flee a hotel where they had taken refuge.”
He referred to those trapped at the Amarula Hotel who were trying to escape in a convoy of 17 vehicles on Friday. Only seven vehicles came to the beach, killing seven people. Some of the other vehicles fled into the dense tropical jungle and were later rescued.
“We continue to coordinate closely with the authorities on the ground to provide assistance to those affected by the violence,” Dujarric said.
The struggle for Palma is expected to drastically exacerbate the humanitarian crisis in Mozambique’s northern Cabo Delgado province, where the rebels launched violent attacks in 2017. The rebels began as a few groups of disgruntled and unemployed young Muslim men. They now probably number in the thousands, according to experts.
“The attack on Palma is a shift because the rebels have changed the narrative,” said an expert who returned from Palma earlier this month.
“This is not a block of disorganized young people. This is a trained and purposeful force that has conquered and held a city and is now maintaining a fight for a very strategic center, ”said the expert, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of visiting Palma. “They have questioned the entire LNG (liquefied natural gas) investment, which should give Mozambique great economic growth over many years.”
Locally known as al-Shabab, though having no known connection to Somalia’s jihadist rebels of the same name, the violence of the rebels in Mozambique, a nation of 30 million, is blamed for the deaths of more than 2,600 people and an estimated 670,000 people fleeing their homes.
“The attack on Palma has exacerbated a poor humanitarian situation,” said Jonathan Whittall, director of analysis for Médecins Sans Frontières, which works to help displaced people around Pemba, the provincial capital 100 miles south of Palma.
“Across Cabo Delgado, the situation was already extremely worrying for those displaced by violence and for those in areas that are difficult for humanitarian aid to reach,” Whittall said. “This attack on Palma has led to greater displacement and will increase the needs to be addressed as a matter of urgency.”
“For too long, northern Mozambique has been a neglected humanitarian crisis,” Whittall said, adding that his organization was exploring ways to expand its preparedness.
