Beheaded bodies strewn in streets
Isis fights to control town at centre of massive gas deal
Fierce fighting for control of Mozambique’s strategic northern town of Palma left beheaded bodies strewn in the streets yesterday, with heavily armed rebels battling army, police and a private military outfit in several locations.
Thousands were estimated to be missing from the town, which held about 70,000 people before the attack began last Thursday.
The Islamic State group (Isis) claimed responsibility for yesterday’s attack, saying it was carried out by the Islamic State Central Africa Province, according to the Site extremist monitoring group.
The rebel claim said the insurgents now control Palma’s banks, government offices, factories and army barracks, and that more than 55 people, including Mozambican Army troops, Christians and foreigners were killed. It did not provide further detail on the dead.
Palma is the centre of a multi-billion dollar investment by Total, the France-based oil and gas company, to extract liquified natural gas from offshore sites in the Indian Ocean.
The gas deposits are estimated to be among the world’s largest and the investment by Total and others is reported to be US$20 billion ($28.5b), one of the largest in Africa.
The battle for Palma forced Total to evacuate its large, fortified site a few kilometres outside of the city.
Fighting spread across the town yesterday, according to Lionel Dyck, director of the Dyck Advisory Group, a private military company contracted by the Mozambican police to help fight the rebels. The Dyck group has several helicopter gunships in Palma which have been used to rescue trapped civilians and to fight the rebels.
“My guys are airborne and they’ve engaged several little groups and they’ve engaged one quite large group,” Dyck said. “They’ve landed into the fight to recover a couple of wounded policemen . . . We have also rescued many people who were trapped, 220 people at last count.”
The rebels are well-armed with AK-47 automatic rifles, RPD and PKM machine guns and heavy mortars, Dyck said.
“There have been lots 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 off.”
The battle for Palma is similar to how the rebels seized the port Mocimboa da Praia in August. The rebels infiltrated men into the town to live among residents and then launched a three-pronged attack. Fighting continued for more than a week until the rebels controlled the town centre and then its port. The town, about 80km south of Palma, is still held by the rebels.
The insurgents began as a few bands of disaffected and unemployed young Muslim men. They now likely number in the thousands, according to experts.
Known locally as al-Shabab, although they have no known affiliation with Somalia’s jihadist rebels of the same name, the rebels’ violence in Mozambique, a nation of 30 million, is blamed for the deaths of more than 2600 people.