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Mozambique's president, Filipe Nyusi, promised Wednesday to hunt down and unmask the attackers involved in a series of deadly badaults that hit the country's northern region and killed at least 250 people.
For nearly two years, suspected Islamists raided isolated communities in the gas-rich, Muslim-majority Cabo Delgado province, burning houses and sometimes even beheading civilians.
The identity of the activists remains uncertain and their motives unknown.
"We will fight and chase them," Nyusi told lawmakers during a speech.
"Until now, they have never been in the face, but the security forces are looking for them and fighting them relentlessly," Nyusi said.
"We hope that the arrests of recent weeks will help us find out who they are," he said without specifying the timing of the arrest or the number of suspects arrested.
A senior police official in the northern province confirmed that arrests had occurred recently, but declined to give details.
The Attorney General said at the end of last year that at least 400 suspects had been arrested since attacks began in October 2017.
But only a few dozen have been tried and convicted.
ISIS has claimed to be involved in three recent insurgent attacks, according to SITE Intelligence, an organization that monitors extremist activities.
But badysts expressed doubts about the complaint while the police rejected it.
Some experts have attributed violence to Cabo Delgado to a group called in Arabic Ahlu Sunnah Wa-Jama, although it is usually called "Al-Shabaab", although there is no known connection to the group Somali jihadist of the same name.
Its activists would seek to impose Sharia law in the predominantly Muslim province.
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