Children Among Victims of Jihadi Rebels in Mozambique
Children as young as 11 are being beheaded in Mozambique, UK-based aid group Save the Children said on Tuesday, as part of an Islamist insurgency that has killed thousands and forced many magnitudes more from their homes.
Save the Children, an aid group based in Britain, said in a short account released Tuesday that it had spoken to displaced families who gave details of their young children being killed by militants from the local group referred to as al-Shabab.
“That night our village was attacked and houses were burned,” a woman referred to like Elsa, 28, told the organization. “When it all started, I was at home with my four children. We tried to escape to the woods, but they took my eldest son and beheaded him.
“We couldn’t do anything because we would be killed too,” Elsa said. Her son was 12, according to Save the Children.
There have been numerous reports of beheading in the Cabo Delgado conflict, including of children.
Chance Briggs, Save the Children’s country director in Mozambique, said that the reports of violence against children in Cabo Delgado “sicken us to our core” and said that staff had been brought to tears when speaking to witnesses.
The conflict in Cabo Delgado, a region in the northeast corner of Mozambique, intensified significantly last year. Much of the worst violence has been attributed to al-Shabab, a local Islamist group that does not have known links to the better-known Somali group with the same name.
More than 2,600 people have died in the conflict since it started in 2017; according to the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project.
The United States last week declared the Mozambique group a foreign terrorist organization over its links to Islamic State; saying the group reportedly pledged allegiance to it as early as 2018. Islamic State claimed its first attack in Cabo Delgado in June 2019.
The U.S. embassy in Mozambique on Monday said U.S. special forces will train Mozambican marines for two months; with the country also providing medical and communications equipment, to help Mozambique combat the insurgency.
