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Suspected Islamists behead 10 in Mozambique: local sources
MAPUTO, May 29, 2018 (BSS/AFP) – Ten people including children were
beheaded in a village in northern Mozambique in a weekend attack blamed on
suspected Islamists, local sources said on Tuesday.
The attack occurred in Monjane, a village not far from Palma, a small town
gearing up to be the country’s new natural gas hub in the northern Cabo
Delgado province.
“We were informed about this tragedy,” Palma’s administrator David
Machimbuko told AFP, with the information also confirmed by a local resident,
who blamed Islamists.
Mozambique’s state broadcaster also reported on “10 persons decapitated”
in the Palma area.
Police were expected to give a news conference later on Tuesday.
Since October, Cabo Delgado has seen a number of attacks by suspected
radical Islamists.
One of the victims of the weekend attack was the leader of Monjane
village, a local resident said, without giving his name for fear of
reprisals.
“They targeted the chief as he had been providing information to the
police about the location of al-Shabaab in forests,” he told AFP, referring
to an armed group believed responsible for a deadly October attack on a
police station and military post in the town of Mocimboa da Praia.
Two officers died and 14 attackers were killed in what was believed to be
the first jihadist attack on the country.
The group has no known link to the Somali jihadist group of the same name.
In the following weeks, at least 300 Muslims were arrested and several
mosques forced to close.
BSS/AFP/RY/1535 hrs