PEMBA (Reuters) – Luisa Jose, 52, a mother of five, says she came face to face with insurgents linked to the Islamic State when they attacked the gas pole city of Palma, in northern Mozambique, 10 days ago.
“I was running for my life … they came from all over the streets,” she told Reuters from a stadium in the port city of Pemba that is home to some of the thousands who fled the violence.
“I saw them with bazookas. They wore uniforms with red scarves … tied around their heads. “
Jose said militants quickly invaded his hometown of Palma, next to huge $ 60 billion gas projects.
Aid workers believe that tens of thousands of people fled the attack, which began on March 24. However, only 9,900 of the displaced have been registered in Pemba and other parts of Cabo Delgado province, according to the UN humanitarian agency OCHA.
Many may still be hiding in the surrounding forest, said international aid group Médecins Sans Frontieres, and those who emerged said they saw the bodies of others who died of starvation or dehydration on the way.
Some were also killed by crocodiles or died in the deep mud, according to a contractor whose official witnessed both.
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Most communications with Palma were cut off when the attack began, and Reuters was unable to independently verify witness reports.
A spokesman for Mozambique’s defense and security forces declined to comment on Saturday, while calls to the national police went unanswered.
The province of Cabo Delgado, where Palma is located, has been hosting a fervent Islamic insurgency since 2017 linked to the Islamic State. Clashes between militants and government forces around Palma continued on Friday, security sources told Reuters.
South Africa said on Saturday that Mozambique’s neighbors would meet next week to discuss the insurgency.
The Mozambican government said dozens of people died in the attack on Palma, but the full scale of the victims and displacement remains uncertain.
Fact Abdula Ali, 29, said she was separated from her husband and three children in chaos. Nine months pregnant, she was unable to accompany the other residents as they fled and delivered their baby son alone in the bush. She cut the baby’s umbilical cord with a tree branch, she said.
The next day, she said, she stripped off her blood-soaked clothes and found another group of people who took turns to carry her to safety.
“My whole body hurts,” she told Reuters at a hotel in Pemba.
Luisa José said he spent almost five days in the bush, eating bitter cassava tubers and drinking from puddles of cloudy water before arriving in Quitunda, a village for people relocated by gas megaprojects led by major oil companies, including France’s Total.
From there, she says, she was evacuated by Total, but had to leave behind more than six family members, including her husband and daughter, because there was no space on the boat.
Total on Friday withdrew all of its remaining workforce from the project site near Palma, two sources with direct knowledge of the site’s operations told Reuters, leaving it in the hands of the military. Total declined to comment.
José has not heard from his family since she left them behind. They are among the thousands arrested in Quitunda, according to aid workers and diplomats.
“Are they safe? Do they have shelter? Will they come back? I don’t know, ”she said.
Reporting by Emidio Jozine in Pemba; Additional reporting and writing by Emma Rumney; Editing by Alexandra Zavis and Ros Russell