Rising numbers of people flee jihadists, as violence against civilians increases and foreign aid dwindles
More than 300,000 people have been displaced by an Islamic State insurgency in Mozambique since July, amid growing fears that authorities lack a workable plan to end the fighting.
With wars in Ukraine, Gaza and Sudan attracting more attention and foreign aid falling, the grinding conflict in Mozambique has been largely ignored or forgotten. More than 1 million people have been displaced, many of them two, three or even four times.
Neither the Mozambican army nor a Rwandan intervention have managed to quell the insurgency, which has ravaged northern Mozambique since October 2017, when militants from Islamic State-Mozambique, an affiliate of the main IS group in the Middle East, carried out their first attacks, in Mocímboa da Praia in Cabo Delgado province in the north-east.
The group drew global attention in March 2021 with an attack on the town of Palma. More than 600 people were killed in the assault and the military’s subsequent recapturing of the town, according to Armed Conflict Location and Event Data, a non-profit conflict monitor, including foreign workers on a multibillion-dollar Total liquefied natural gas (LNG) project.
