Mozambique’s Government Regains Control of Key Coastal Town

MAPUTO - Mozambique’s government said it is reclaiming territory from Islamic State-affiliated insurgents that besieged the key northern coastal town of Palma, with some of the thousands of civilians who fled now going back to take stock of their losses.  One week since the attack on Palma, #Mozambique, began, the security situation reportedly remains volatile and thousands of people are on the move in search of safety & assistance. Nearly 9,200 have already arrived in other districts of #CaboDelgado: https://t.co/bCfsRwb3JL pic.twitter.com/JXKTeEt9wL

“The population is returning, but they have nothing to eat because the terrorists have looted almost everything,” Agostinho Muthisse, a Mozambican military commander, said to a small group of journalists that the government flew in to visit Palma on Sunday.  Militants armed with rocket launchers, rifles and machetes began an assault on Palma — a town of 75,000 in Mozambique’s impoverished but resource-rich province of Cabo Delgado — on March 24. That day, the French oil gas company Total had planned to resume work on a nearby liquified natural gas (LNG) project after insecurity forced it to suspend operations in December. By last Friday, the company had withdrawn all its personnel.  The fresh attacks have uprooted more than 9,100 people in the province, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). Even before the recent attacks there had been roughly 670,000 internally displaced people since 2017 as a result of the insurgency in northern Mozambique OCHA said.