A shadowy Islamist group that has terrorized northern Mozambique killed 52 villagers on April 7 after locals refused to be recruited to their ranks, local media cited police as saying on Tuesday.
“Recently, the criminals tried to recruit young people to join their ranks, but there was resistance on the part of the youths. This provoked the anger of the criminals, who indiscriminately killed — cruelly and diabolically — 52 young people,” police spokesman Orlando Mudumane told the state-owned broadcasting service.
The killings took place in the village of Xitaxi, and the villagers were “massacred,” either shot dead or beheaded, Mudumane said.
A hunt for the attackers has been launched to bring them to justice, police said.
Militants have stepped up attacks as part of a campaign to establish an Islamist caliphate in gas-rich Cabo Delgado Province, seizing government buildings, blocking roads, and briefly hoisting their black-and-white flag over towns and villages.
For more than two years the militants have mainly targeted isolated villages, killing more than 900 people, according to the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project.
The unrest has forced hundreds of thousands to flee and raised concern among energy giants operating in the region.
More than 200,000 people have fled, Catholic Archbishop Dom Luiz Fernando said, adding that some had sought refuge among friends and relatives in the port city of Pemba, the capital of the province.
The Islamic State Central Africa Province group has claimed some of the attacks in the region since last year.
Since October 2017, when it first staged an attack in the province, the group had hidden the identities of its fighters, but this year it has unmasked its fighters and openly declaring its goal of turning the region into a caliphate.
“We don’t want a government from unbelievers, we want a government from Allah,” a member of the group told residents at a rally.
The fighters have since emerged from their hideouts and openly taken control of three Cabo Delgado districts.
Locally the group is known as al-Shabaab, although it has no known links to the group of the same name operating in Somalia.
A local source on April 7 has said that the militants went on a rampage burning bridge construction equipment, and ransacking schools, hospitals and a bank.
Before the raids, the militants used loudhailers to warn villagers “not to run away, but stay inside the house,” the source said.
Troops and special police units deployed to Cabo Delgado have failed to rein in the insurgency.
Mozambican Police Chief Bernardino Rafael last week downplayed the attacks, but conceded that there had been “criminal incursions.”
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