The United States on Thursday (December 3) pledged to help Mozambique fight the Islamist insurgency threatening the resource-rich province of Cabo Delgado (north).
Read also: Undermined by jihadism, Burkina Faso threatens to collapse
State Department Counterterrorism Coordinator Nathan Sales met with President Filipe Nyusi in Maputo.
"
The United States wishes to deepen its friendship with Mozambique as we both face the challenge of terrorism,
" the US official said in a statement.
Nathan Sales stressed the need for international cooperation to end the conflict in northern Mozambique, which has lasted for three years and has caused the deaths of more than 2,000 people, leading to the forced displacement of 500,000 others.
A group known locally as Al-Shabab "
(
" young people "in Arabic) launched a bloody insurgency in 2017 in Cabo Delgado province and in 2019 pledged allegiance to the Islamic State. The conflict is unfolding in a strategic region for the exploitation of immense reserves of liquefied natural gas, on which this poor country of southern Africa relies to increase its income and become one of the main world exporters.
/cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/prisa/KEJKPQHVMJAPJONPEDK42JL56U.jpg)
