Escapees From Mozambique's Palma Surprised By Unprecedented Violence - Priest

After Islamic insurgents destroyed the communication infrastructure and overpowered government forces in Mozambique's Palma, thousands of local residents were forced to flee the city by ship or plane, surprised by the violence in the area that they considered to be safe, a priest in the neighboring city of Pemba told Sputnik

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 31st March, 2021) After Islamic insurgents destroyed the communication infrastructure and overpowered government forces in Mozambique's Palma, thousands of local residents were forced to flee the city by ship or plane, surprised by the violence in the area that they considered to be safe, a priest in the neighboring city of Pemba told Sputnik.

"After we heard the news that Palma was attacked, we started to receive many people from there on Sunday. More than 1,000 people arrived here by ship. Some people who worked for different companies arrived by plane. There is an airport in Palma. There were a few planes coming from there to Pemba," Pe Kwiriwi Fonseca, a priest working with the Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) in Pemba, located about 260 miles south of Palma, told Sputnik.

Those who fled Palma described their sufferings in the city, the priest said, adding that a child received gunshot wounds and was being treated at a local hospital in Pemba.

Many of those who worked for various companies in Palma went on to travel to the capital city of Maputo after arriving in Pemba, while others tried to stay with friends or relatives in Pemba, Fonseca said.

Although Islamic insurgents launched attacks previously in neighboring regions, locals in Palma were surprised that they could overpower the government forces and almost took over the city, the priest said.

"People thought they were safe. The places where the previous attacks happened, there were many government military forces. That's why they were surprised, because the place [Palma] seems to be safe. Based on the people we talked to, the way it happened really surprised a lot of them," he said.

Fonseca explained that people in Palma became really scared because they saw that the Islamic insurgents were much more powerful than the government forces in Mozambique.

After more than two days of heavy fighting, the situation in Palma seems to have cooled down after the insurgents appeared to have left the city and the government forces regained control, the priest said.

Nevertheless, the insurgents destroyed the communication infrastructure of Palma during their occupation, which made it very difficult to make phone calls to the city, Fonseca added.

The priest was aware of the group of foreigners who were trapped at the Amarula Hotel in Palma and said some of them were killed when they attempted to escape in a convoy that came under attack.

Seven people were reportedly killed after the convoy of 17 vehicles from the Amarula hotel was attacked on its way to reach the beach in Palma.

Some of them hid in the bushes and were later rescued by government forces and private security companies such as the Dyck Advisory Group.

Over 800 people in Palma have been reported to be missing, Joana Martins, a staff member with the VAMOZ volunteer group in Mozambique, told Sputnik on Tuesday. Moreover, on Wednesday, Saviano Abreu, a spokesman for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), told Sputnik that over 5,000 people have fled violence in Palma following the militant attack, and thousands of others are on their way.

However, Adrian Frey, the managing director of the Beluluane Industrial Park and Free-Trade Zone in Mozambique, suggested that the Islamic insurgents' group that carried out the attack in Palma could be easily managed through international military support.

"In the big picture, it's a small movement. There're probably less than 1000 followers of this group. The numbers in international teams are quite small. And they're only concentrated in one small area in Mozambique. But we believe Mozambique needs international support because the country is poor and it needs better military organization to address the challenges. But once we have international support and more experiences in how to handle this, then it's very manageable to stop this," Frey told Sputnik.

The Swiss-Mozambican businessman illustrated how this Islamic insurgents' group emerged in Mozambique.

"Mozambique is known for its very peaceful and friendly people. It came out as a big surprise when such attacks started to happen in 2017. It's really a small group of religiously fundamentalists who came down from Kenya and Tanzania and began to live in this northern region of Mozambique, which is very rural and very poor. That's how they could organize a group of young supporters, who are poor and joined this extremist movement," he said.

Frey hoped that the international attention the recent attacks received could help bring more support for Mozambique in dealing with the security threats from such insurgents' groups.

Despite the Islamic insurgents appearing to have obtained heavier weapons such as mortars and machine guns, they're still no match against elite special forces from the developed nations, he added.

Portugal plans to deploy 60 special forces soldiers to Mozambique in the first half of April, the Lusa news agency reported on Tuesday citing defense ministry sources.