Mozambique: Irish community ‘safe’ after Islamist ambush attack

A “very small” number of Irish people in Mozambique are said to be safe, after Islamist militants in the northern part of the country killed as many as 60 people – mostly foreign citizens – at the weekend.

The Department of Foreign Affairs said the Irish embassy in Maputo is monitoring the situation for Irish people closely and was keeping in touch with the UN and authorities in Mozambique.

“The very small number of Irish nationals known to have been in the area of Cabo Delgado are confirmed safe. Embassy Maputo is monitoring the situation closely and is in contact with the Mozambique authorities, as well as the UN and other international agencies on the ground,” the department said in a statement on Monday.

On Wednesday, Islamist rebels attacked Palma from three directions. Many foreign contractors have been working in the region for a liquefied natural gas project by French energy company Total.

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A few hundred foreign workers from South Africa, Britain and France sought refuge at hotels that quickly became targets for rebel attacks – an estimated 200 foreign workers were believed to be in the Hotel Amarula alone.

According to audio describing the situation following the attack, passed on to the Guardian, the people under siege at the Hotel Amarula were without ammunition and had sent out a final SOS saying they did not “expect to make it through the night”.

After a failed attempt to escape by sea, a convoy of vehicles attempted to flee the besieged hotel and reach the coast before they were ambushed twice.

With hundreds of expats initially reported trapped in the town in the aftermath of the attack, private security contractors had warned of the risk of an “absolute bloodbath”.

According to the recordings, only seven vehicles in a convoy of 17 made it to safety after the attack on Friday, with seven confirmed dead and many injured in the recovered vehicles.

Amid considerable confusion over the situation, a spokesperson for Mozambique’s defence and security forces confirmed the death of seven people in the convoy including foreigners, adding that hundreds of other people, both locals and foreigners, had been rescued from the town.

Omar Saranga added that “dozens” of other people had been killed in the town during the fighting.

Human Rights Watch said that witnesses described seeing “bodies on the streets and residents fleeing after the fighters fired indiscriminately at people and buildings”.

Estimates of the number of those missing varied. Martin Ewi, a senior researcher with the Pretoria-based think-tank, the Institute for Security Studies, said that “over 100” people were still unaccounted for since the attack.

“That’s what we know so far,” he said, but added that the situation on the ground was confusing.

The Mozambican military was reported to be struggling with its own dead and wounded from the attack after being completely overrun.

Mozambique’s insurgents are known locally as al-Shabaab, although they do not have any known connection to Somalia’s jihadist rebels of that name.

The rebels have been active in Cabo Delgado province since 2017, but their attacks have become much more frequent and deadly over the past year.

The three-year insurgency by the rebels, primarily disaffected young Muslim men, in the northern Cabo Delgado province has taken more than 2,600 lives and displaced an estimated 670,000 people, according to the UN. – Guardian