PEMBA — Luisa Jose, a 52-year-old mother of five, says
she came face-to-face with Daesh-linked insurgents when they attacked the gas
hub town of Palma in northern Mozambique 10 days ago.
اضافة اعلان
“I was running to
save my life ... they were coming from every street,” she told Reuters from a
stadium in the port city of Pemba housing some of the thousands who fled the
violence.
“I saw them with
bazookas. They wore uniforms with red scarves ... tied to their heads.”
Jose said the militants
quickly overran her hometown of Palma, next to huge gas projects worth $60
billion.
Aid workers
believe tens of thousands of people fled the assault, which began on March 24.
However, just 9,900 of those displaced had been registered in Pemba and other
parts of Cabo Delgado province, according to the UN humanitarian agency OCHA.
Many could still
be hiding in the surrounding forest, said the international aid group Medecins
Sans Frontieres, and those who emerged have recounted seeing bodies of others who
died of hunger or dehydration along the way.
Some were also
killed by crocodiles or perished in deep mud, according to a contractor whose
employee witnessed both.
Left behind
Most communications to
Palma were cut when the attack began, and Reuters has not been able to
independently verify witnesses’ accounts.
A spokesman for
Mozambique’s defense and security forces declined to comment on Saturday, while
calls to the national police went unanswered.
The province of
Cabo Delgado, where Palma is located, has been home since 2017 to a simmering
extremist insurgency now linked to Daesh. Clashes between the militants and
government forces around Palma continued as recently as Friday, security
sources told Reuters.
South Africa said
on Saturday that Mozambique’s neighbors would meet next week to discuss the
insurgency.
Mozambique’s
government has said dozens were killed in the attack on Palma but the full
scale of the casualties and displacement remains unclear.
Fato Abdula Ali,
29, said she was separated from her husband and three children in the chaos.
Nine-months pregnant, she couldn’t keep up with other residents as they made
their escape and delivered her baby son alone in the bush. She cut the infant’s
umbilical cord with a tree branch, she said.
The next day, she
said, she stripped herself of her blood-soaked clothes and found another group
of people who took turns carrying her to safety.
“My whole body
aches,” she told Reuters at a hotel in Pemba.
Luisa Jose said
she spent almost five days in the bush, eating bitter cassava tubers and
drinking from cloudy pools of water before making it to Quitunda, a village for
people relocated by the mega gas projects led by major oil companies, including
France’s Total.
From there, she
says, she was evacuated by Total but had to leave behind more than six family
members, including her husband and a daughter, because there was no room on the
boat.
Total on Friday
pulled all of its remaining workforce from its project site near Palma, two
sources with direct knowledge of site operations told Reuters, leaving it in
the hands of the military. Total declined to comment.
Jose has had no
news of her family members since she left them behind. They are among thousands
believed to be stranded in Quitunda, according to aid workers and diplomats.
“Are they safe?
Do they have shelter? Will they come back? I don’t know,” she said.
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