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“They slit his throat,” Said Ahmad, 47, told the BBC, rubbing his finger along his throat and recounting how dozens of insurgents entered his village in northern Mozambique at the start of the war. months, and there they killed seven men, including his brother, Bernado Bacar.
Another witness described the grotesque aftermath of another attack: bloodied bodies tied with ropes, severed heads barely balanced on their necks.
But the most frightening detail is that many of those deaths were children.
And the international aid agency Save the Children confirmed it in a frightening complaint it released this week: Islamist activists beheaded children as young as 11 in Cabo Delgado province, in northern Mozambique.
According to the accounts of those who fled this regionAffected in recent years by a fierce internal conflict that has left nearly 2,500 dead and 700,000 displaced, this method of execution is repeated and is perpetrated by Islamist insurgents fighting in the region.
A woman told Save The Children that she witnessed the beheading of her 12-year-old son while she was in hiding with her other children.
This is a new chapter in the battle for control of the north of the country – where there are gas fields worth approximately US $ 15 billion – which began in 2017 with the appearance of several rebel militias linked to the self-proclaimed Islamic State.
In its report, Save the Children says it spoke to many displaced families, who recounted these horrific scenes.
“That night our town was attacked and the houses burned down”said the woman who testified.
“When it all started, I was in the house with my four children. We tried to escape into the forest, but they grabbed my oldest son and beheaded him. There was nothing we could do, because if we did, they would kill us too. ”
In a similar account, another mother said her son was killed by militants and, along with her other children, was forced to flee the area where they lived.
“After my 11-year-old son was killed, we realized that he was no longer safe to live there,” the woman said.
“We went to my father’s house in another town, but a few days later, the militants arrived and attacked this place, ”he added.
Luck Briggs, director of Save the Children in Mozambique, points out that the report which revealed the repeated attacks on children in the country “made us sick to the heart”.
“Our staff broke down in tears when they heard the stories of suffering told by mothers in IDP camps,” Briggs told the BBC.
The UN special rapporteur on the issue of extrajudicial killings called the activists’ action “cruel beyond words”.
Who are the insurgents?
The insurgents are known locally as al Shabab, although it is not known whether they have any ties to the Somali Islamist group of the same name.
East al Shabab of Mozambique expressed its alliance with Islamic State.
In fact, ISIS has claimed to have carried out numerous attacks in Mozambique and apparently favored its intervention there as if it were a “franchise” operation. The US State Department has classified this group as a terrorist organization.
But despite these remarks, the group rarely gave any indication of its political motives or religious, their leadership structure and, above all, their demands.
In a video released last year, one of the activists’ leaders said: “We raided the cities to show that the current government is unjust. It humiliates the poor and gives the profits to the bosses.”
In the video, the man talks about Islam and his desire for an “Islamic government, not a government of infidels.”
He also mentions the abuses committed by the Mozambican army and reiterates the complaint that the government is unfair.
Briggs told the BBC that it is very difficult to determine exactly what is behind the violence in this region.
“Mozambique is the eighth poorest country in the world. Cabo Delgado is one of the poorest regions, but there is a huge amount of mineral resources there and there is this idea that this wealth is not there. not distributed fairly, which could have fueled a conflict, ”he said.
It is estimated that due to this internal conflict, about a third of the population of this region had to relocate elsewhere.
“But, frankly, there is no manifesto, which makes it difficult to understand the exact motivations. What we are seeing is that the insurgents are trying to expel people. They kidnap young men to join them as recruits, and if they refuse, they are killed. And they are often beheaded. They scare people. It’s really hard to know what your strategy is there, ”he adds.
What else is going on in Cabo Delgado?
This is not the first time that reports of beheading have been heard in the region.
Last November, local media reported that at least 50 people were beheaded in the middle of a football field.
In April 2020, dozens more too they were executed in the same way or by firing at close range during an attack on a town in the region.
Human rights groups said security forces also committed abuses, including arbitrary arrests, torture and extrajudicial killings during operations against the Islamist insurgency.
On Monday, officials from the US embassy in the country said military personnel will be deployed to Mozambique for two months with the idea of training soldiers, while providing logistical and communications support to local troops.
“The protection of civilians, human rights and community participation are fundamental to the cooperation of the United States and are fundamental to effectively fight against the Islamic State in Mozambique,” the embassy statement said.
Child abduction
But beheadings are not the only attack on children.
Several witnesses told the BBC they saw abducted women and girls by activists in various conflict-affected areas.
“I saw my daughter trying to run for a boat with two other children. The Al Shabab people chased them. They took my daughter and many others. Then they set our village on fire.” , did she say. Fatima Abdul, 43 years old.
Fatima managed to escape late last year through the beaches near her home in Cabo Delgado. Now she lives in the coastal town of Pemba in a refugee camp.
“I’m still trying to find out what happened to my granddaughter. I don’t know if they took her to marry him or to kill her. I am in pain and I don’t know how to fix it. We’re stuck here with nothing. The help we are receiving is not enough, ”said Alberto Carlos Said, 67, a fisherman who now also lives in Pemba.
Her granddaughter is 14 years old. His daughter was also kidnapped by al Shababbut they released her when they found out that she was pregnant.
“We came here on foot, with nothing. We were afraid. We saw al Shabab being stabbed to death. I know a lot of women who were kidnapped. There are a lot of children in the camp whose mothers were kidnapped, “Mr.
.
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