Maputo, 3 Dec (AIM) – The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has announced that Islamist terrorism has forced, in recent months, the displacement of about 300,000 people in the northern Mozambican provinces of Cabo Delgado and Nampula.
Since 2017, violent extremist attacks have been taking place in Cabo Delgado, where at least 6,200 people have been killed and over one million displaced.
However, the violence has been tending to spread to other regions, especially in Nampula. Recent attacks against Memba district give a clear indication that the jihadists are moving southwards, into the coastal districts of Nampula.
According to UNHCR representative Xavier Creach, speaking to reporters on Tuesday in Geneva, extreme violence has forced almost 100,000 people to flee the region over the past two weeks alone, while “in the last three months, a minimum of 287,000 people had fled.”
Creach expressed his concern at the high number of displaced people, claiming that “this figure only corresponds to those people who have been registered. Many more individual cases have gone unrecorded.”
According to the organization, the attacks against civilians have been intensifying and the conflict is spreading to regions previously regarded as safe, making the provision of humanitarian aid more difficult.
“These are very challenging needs, and the response is largely insufficient. Humanitarian actors collectively cannot sustain the response without additional support and resources. We need urgent international support”, Creach said.
Since the current conflict erupted in 2017, more than 1.3 million people in Mozambique have been displaced, according to the agency.
(AIM)
Ad/pf (264)
