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Witnesses say the assailants took the victims to a soccer field in the town of Muatide, where the killings took place.
Police say the attackers beheaded and dismembered more than 50 people in the Cabo Delgado province of northern Mozambique over the past three days as violence continues in the area.
ISIL-linked fighters attacked several villages in Miudumbe and Macomia districts, killing civilians, abducting women and children and burning houses, said Bernardino Rafael, Mozambique’s police general commander during a press conference on Monday.
“They burned the houses and then they went after the population that had fled into the forest and began their macabre actions,” Rafael said.
Witnesses told local media that the assailants led residents to the local soccer field in the village of Muatide, where the killings took place.
Security forces in the gas-rich Cabo Delgado province have been fighting the armed group, which pledged allegiance to ISIL (ISIS) last year, since 2017.
But some analysts have questioned how serious the ISIL (ISIS) link really is, saying that the root of the unrest may be poverty and inequality rather than religion. Little is known about the fighters who call themselves al-Shabab, although they have no known ties to the group of that name operating in Somalia.
The unrest has killed more than 2,000 people since 2017, more than half of them civilians, according to the US-based Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project.
The violent attacks in Cabo Delgado have triggered a humanitarian crisis with more than 300,000 internally displaced persons and 712,000 in need of humanitarian assistance, according to an Amnesty International report released last month.
Shock and pain
Gunmen fired shots and burned houses when they raided Nanjaba village on Friday night, survivors said, citing the Mozambique state news agency. Two people were beheaded and several women kidnapped.
Another group of fighters attacked the village of Muatide where they beheaded more than 50 people, the news agency reported.
Villagers were hacked to pieces in an atrocity carried out from Friday night to Sunday, the Pinnancle News website reported.
The dismembered bodies of at least five adults and 15 children were found on Monday strewn across a forest clearing in Muidumbe district.
“The police learned about the massacre committed by the insurgents through reports of people who found bodies in the forest,” said an official from the neighboring Mueda district who asked not to be identified.
“It was possible to count 20 bodies spread over an area of about 500 meters (1,640 feet). These were young people who were in a ceremony of initiation rite accompanied by their advisers ”.
A humanitarian worker in Mueda, who also declined to be identified, confirmed that the killings had taken place and said that some of the children had come from that area. She said the body parts had been sent to their families for burial on Tuesday.
“The funerals were held in an environment of great pain,” said the worker. “The bodies were already decomposing and could not be shown to those present.”
The armed group has intensified its offensive in recent months and violently seized territory, terrorizing citizens in the process.
In April, the attackers shot dead and beheaded more than 50 youths for allegedly refusing to join their ranks.
Cabo Delgado is home to a multi-million dollar liquefied natural gas project by French multinational Total.
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