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Police find the decapitated bodies of 12 foreigners in northern Mozambique

2021-04-08T21:07:31.407Z


The victims had sought refuge in a hotel in the city of Palma during a recent jihadist attack The corpses of 12 foreign citizens who had taken refuge in the Amarula hotel in the city of Palma, in northern Mozambique, during the jihadist attack on March 24, were found days later handcuffed and slaughtered about 100 meters from the establishment, Police Commander Pedro da Silva assured journalists from the public television channel Televisión de Mozambique (TVM) this Wednesday. "It is diffic


The corpses of 12 foreign citizens who had taken refuge in the Amarula hotel in the city of Palma, in northern Mozambique, during the jihadist attack on March 24, were found days later handcuffed and slaughtered about 100 meters from the establishment, Police Commander Pedro da Silva assured journalists from the public television channel Televisión de Mozambique (TVM) this Wednesday.

"It is difficult to know their nationalities," added Da Silva, who assured that they were white and that, in his opinion, they were Westerners who tried to take refuge in the hotel thinking it was a safe place.

According to the police account, the bodies of these 12 people were already beginning to decompose when they were located by the agents, who were in charge of burying them in the same place.

"It was a sea of ​​blood," Commander Da Silva told journalists on Mozambican public television who were given access to Palma by the Government about two weeks after the attack, in which "dozens of people" died, including police, military and civilians, according to the Government.

The Army announced that it had retaken control of the city last Sunday.

The Amarula and Palma Inn hotels were looted during the attack.

This Thursday, six presidents of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) called for "a proportionate regional response" to the jihadist threat in northern Mozambique after an extraordinary meeting called by the Commission for Political Cooperation, Defense and Security of this body, made up of 16 countries in the region.

SADC also expressed its "concern about terrorist actions perpetrated against innocent civilians."

Until now, Mozambican President Filipe Nyusi had been reluctant to allow the participation of troops from foreign states on his territory and had only had the support of South African mercenaries from the private company Dyck Advisory Group (DAG).

This Wednesday, in a message to the nation in which he confirmed that the jihadists had been expelled from the city of Palma, Nyusi admitted that he had conveyed to the international community his security needs, but as support and not a replacement for the work of the Armed Forces.

  • The Mozambican Army retakes control of the city attacked by the jihadists

The terrorist group Islamic State (ISIS) claimed responsibility for the terrorist attack on the city of Palma, of about 75,000 inhabitants.

Specifically, those responsible were a group calling itself Al Shabab (without ties to the Somali terrorist organization with the same name), also known as the Islamic State of Central Africa (ISCA, for its acronym in English).

Its first attacks date back to 2017 in a jihadist insurgency centered in the province of Cabo Delgado, which has been characterized by great violence, with some 2,740 dead according to the NGO Acled and almost 700,000 people displaced from their homes.

Amnesty International denounced in a recent report the commission of "war crimes" by the Army and South African mercenaries in their counteroffensive.

The Afungi peninsula, where the city of Palma is located, is also home to one of the most important gas extraction projects in Africa, developed by the French company Total.

This company reported a few days ago of the provisional halt of its activities in the region after being forced to evacuate all its personnel from Palma.

Source: elparis

All news articles on 2021-04-08

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