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According to the Foreign Minister, a team led by the Consul General was created in Maputo, who is in Pemba and will refer to the Portuguese who are in the area.
Those who need social and humanitarian support will be studied and the 15 Portuguese companies in the area will be contacted.
Regarding the Portuguese who suffered injuries, Santos Silva explained that he is in Johannesburg and that his treatment is being followed.
Regarding the sending of troops to the ground, to help Mozambique stop the jihadist threat in Cabo Delgado, the head of Portuguese diplomacy explains that this could only be considered if there was a request from the Mozambican authorities. Something that does not happen.
The first elements of the Portuguese contingent that will help in the formation of the Mozambican military forces will depart in the first half of April.
The district headquarters village of 42,000 people, which is home to the main gas projects in northern Mozambique, was attacked on Wednesday by insurgent groups who have been terrorizing the region for three and a half years. Dozens of civilians, including seven people trying to escape from the main hotel, were killed by the armed group.
The attack was claimed by the Islamic State terrorist group.
There are already 700,000 displaced people in northern Mozambique. The attack by the jihadists on the town of Palma has caused the highest number of displaced people since the beginning of the offensive by the Islamic fundamentalists.
Many people took refuge in the bush and spent several days without food or water, and rescue operations brought them safely to Pemba.
The violence has already caused more than 2,000 deaths and nearly 700,000 displaced people.
Pentagon available to fight ISIS
The Portuguese Minister of Foreign Affairs revealed that the European decision on logistics and health support missions in Mozambique is yet to be known.
However the The Pentagon has already been determined to support the fight against Daesh or ISIS. The United States intends to cooperate with the Mozambican government to achieve this goal.
The availability was stated by Pentagon spokesman John Kirby.
The Defense Department official was reacting in Washington to the attack by insurgents that the United States calls ISIS-Mozambique (also known as Ansar al-Sunna) against the village of Palma, which claimed dozens of civilian deaths.
“We remain determined to cooperate with the government of Mozambique in the fight against terrorism and in the fight against violent extremism and to defeat ISIS.”Kirby said in a statement condemning the attack.
The attacks “demonstrate a complete lack of respect for the welfare and safety of the local population, who suffer terribly from the brutal and indiscriminate tactics of the terrorists,” he said.
The Islamic State has already claimed attack and even control of the village, near the Afungi peninsula, the epicenter of Mozambique’s natural gas projects.
Kirby did not explain how the Defense Department could support the specific Palma case. In mid-March, the The US State Department designated ISIS-Mozambique and its leader Abu Yasir Hassan as terrorists, estimating the death of more than two thousand people.
Too The United Nations (UN) has “strongly” condemned the Palma attacks. It was available to “protect civilians, restore stability and bring the perpetrators” of “heinous acts” to justice.
The UN has assured that close coordination is being carried out “with local authorities to provide assistance to people affected by violence.”
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Brazil also offered prompt cooperation to the Government of Mozambique to combat the terrorist attacks perpetrated in the last week in the province of Cabo Delgado, in northern Mozambique.
South Africa has sent a military plane to northern Mozambique, where at least 43 South Africans are affected by the recent terrorist attacks.
Palma is a ghost town
According to RTP Mozambique reporter Pedro Martins, the city of Palma is a ghost place after the attacks by the self-proclaimed Islamic State and the flight of many people to Pemba.
Thousands of people are fleeing the town of Palma, in Mozambique. After facing the danger of death from the Islamic terrorist groups that plague the region, they now face other difficulties such as hunger and thirst.
They sleep in the open air, in very precarious conditions, to escape the terrorist attacks, which began almost a week ago, in that town in the Cabo Delgado region.
At least 1,000 people who fled Palma, including many children, were refugees on the Afungi peninsula as of Monday, demanding oil, food and transport from Total Oil and the Mozambican authorities.
In addition to Afungi, the population also fled north.
Neighbors spend days walking, without food and water, a story that was repeated during 2020 after each major attack that made the year the most serious of the humanitarian crisis in Cabo Delgado. – raising the number of displaced people from 156,400 to almost 700,000, four times more.
Humanitarian agencies without support
Without help, hunger gains ground and there are people who go without food for more than two days.
United Nations humanitarian agencies face lack of money to help northern Mozambique and “stocks” of essential items such as food and medicine are missing, two sources from the organization told Lusa.
Donors only covered 10% of the $ 254.4 million appeal (216.31 million euros) made in December to support Cabo Delgado, at a time when the aggravation derived from the Palma attack was not yet counted, an official source said.
The situation is critical, added another humanitarian source on the ground to Lusa: in some cases, the elements available for humanitarian assistance meet 30% of the identified needs.
Some displaced communities no longer even agree to receive technical teams to conduct surveys if they do not bring food. “If you don’t have food, it’s not worth it,” he said.
On the ground, those who provide humanitarian aid are calling for a reinforcement of ‘stocks’ that, for now, we do not know where it will come from, especially warning about the impact of child malnutrition, which will have repercussions for many years.
In addition to food (the usual first aid kit includes rice, corn or beans and oil), non-food items (clothing, coat and basic kitchen utensils) and medicines are missing.
Antibiotics are part of the list of needs, in addition to antidiarrheals (based on zinc) and antimalarials, specific to Cabo Delgado where cholera is always lurking and malaria is one of the main causes of death.
“What is in the warehouse is not enough”said the UN source, fearing the greater impact of those displaced by the attack on Palma.
The United Nations Resident Coordinator in Mozambique, Myrta Kaulard, has now arrived in Pemba to monitor the situation with the Mozambican authorities.
