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French energy giant Total has shut down operations and withdrawn all of its staff from a site in northern Mozambique following last week’s deadly jihadist attack in the region, security sources said.
“Total is gone,” a security source in Maputo told French news agency AFP on Friday, adding that “it will be difficult to persuade them to return” this year.
And a military source added, “all facilities are abandoned. Total has made the decision to evacuate all of its personnel,” after drone surveillance showed insurgents were in areas “very close” to it. Afungi gas plant.
Another source confirmed that the insurgents were not far from the site.
The Afungi peninsula is only 10 kilometers from the city of Palma, which was attacked more than a week ago, leading to the deaths of dozens of people, including at least two expatriate workers.
The brazen March 24 assault was the latest in a series of more than 830 raids organized by militant Islamists over the past three years in which more than 2,600 people have died.
Total had already evacuated some of the staff and suspended construction work at the end of December following a series of violent attacks near its compound.
But last week’s raid is considered the biggest escalation in the Islamist insurgency that has ravaged Cabo Delgado province since 2017.
Many civilian survivors fled their homes on their way to the highly secure gas plant.
“Security compromised”
An estimated 15,000 people have gathered near the site, with more arriving and “security is in jeopardy,” another source said.
The “humanitarian situation continues to deteriorate,” the source added.
Total’s release came as army commander Afungi Chongo Vidigal said on Thursday that the gas project was “protected”.
“We are currently in the Afungi special zone and have never had a terrorist threat,” he said.
Total did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Most of the means of communication were cut off after the start of the attack on Palma.
Thousands of troops have been deployed to Cabo Delgado, but Mozambique’s ability to fight the insurgency has long been questioned, with analysts reporting poor training and a lack of equipment.
Government security forces are also reinforced by a private South African military company, Dyck Advisory Group (DAG).
The biggest project ever in Africa
Total and its partners planned to invest $ 20 billion (17 billion euros) in the project, the highest amount ever made for a project in Africa.
In February, Total CEO Patrick Pouyanné insisted that the project, inherited from US energy company Anadarko, was still on track to start operations in 2024.
He said this having reached an agreement with Mozambican President Filipe Nyusi to set up a 25-kilometer-radius secure zone around the site.
But last week, the jihadists attacked, just 10 kilometers from the compound, and reportedly beheaded residents and ransacked buildings in the latest rampage.
Hundreds of people, including many foreign workers, were evacuated by air and sea as thousands of locals took to safety.
The United Nations said it has registered at least 9,100 people internally displaced by the latest violence.
Violence has uprooted nearly 700,000 people from their homes since October 2017.
The jihadists of Cabo Delgado have wreaked havoc across the province in an attempt to establish a caliphate.
The insurgents are affiliated with the Islamic State group, which claimed responsibility for the attack on Palma.
(with AFP)
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