Insurgents in the northern Cabo Delgado province attacked the village of Naquitengue, close to the Inguri river, in the Mocímboa da Praia district beheading between 12 to 17 civilians.
According to local sources, the insurgents entered the village between 5pm to 6pm, wearing military fatigues.
The Mozambican authorities are yet to confirm the attack.
Comment
The heinous attack on civilians takes place almost three weeks after government announced it had killed important figures in the insurgency leadership, including most wanted Bonomado Mashudo Omar aka as Ibn Omar.
In a way, an attack was on the cards: either for the insurgency to prove it had not been defeated or to refute the narrative that the death of a leader meant the end of the insurgency in Cabo Delgado.
Meanwhile, that the insurgency still rages on six years later, it is partly due to government mistakes, starting from the absence of a known, socialised and accepted counter-terrorism strategy to the comportamentalised management of aid, that is, what is said to the Rwandans is not said to SAMIM (Southern African Development Community Mission in Mozambique), and with the European Union money always welcome.
Incidentally, these mistakes seem to be part of the management strategy of this war, which is structurally tearing apart areas potentially rich in hydrocarbons, causing a new geography in the distribution of people.
Within President Filipe Nyusi’s inner circle the question is whether TotalEnergies will resume activities long before the 2024 general elections. With the country cash-strapped, any source of funding for the ruling Frelimo party’s electoral campaigns is always a feather in Nyusi’s hat.
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