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Up to 60 people, mostly foreign nationals, are missing after a deadly ambush in their convoy by Islamist militants in northern Mozambique.
According to recordings of security calls reviewed by The Guardian describing the aftermath of the attack, only seven vehicles in a convoy of 17 made it to safety after Friday’s attack, with seven confirmed dead and many injured in the recovered vehicles. Everyone in the other vehicles is presumed dead.
The heartbreaking details of the attack came after reports that South Africa was considering sending military forces as part of a mission to rescue the remaining civilians in the city.
Islamist rebels attacked Palma, where many foreign contractors have been working for a multi-billion dollar liquefied natural gas project run by French energy company Total, on Wednesday, leading to five days of fighting so far.
A few hundred foreign workers from South Africa, Great Britain and France sought refuge in hotels that quickly became targets of rebel attacks; Some 200 foreign workers were believed to be alone at the Amarula Hotel. After a failed attempt to escape by sea, a convoy of vehicles attempted to flee the besieged hotel and reach the coast before being ambushed twice.
One of those killed in the convoy was identified in the South African media as Adrian Nel, who was reportedly killed when he, his father and his younger brother joined the convoy that tried to escape from the Amarula Lodge hotel.
Nel’s body and family members were finally rescued by helicopter Saturday morning and taken to the nearby, and heavily defended, Afungi liquefied natural gas facility being built by Total.
Nel had only been in the coastal city since January, where he was hired to build housing for the gas workers.
His mother, Meryl Knox, told Agence-France Presse: “When they left [the hotel], were ambushed. They shot my son.
“There is no way to describe how you feel when you receive news like that. It’s just devastating, it numbs the body, it numbs the mind. “
The recordings describe scenes of chaos in which helicopters and boats led by various security companies tried to remove those trapped in the city. A convoy was hit in an ambush almost as soon as it left the Amarula hotel.
In one recording, a contractor describes the aftermath of the ambush. “That thing Pierre was describing.” There were 17 vehicles. We know a lot of the guys involved in that convoy. Seventeen vehicles left Amarula.
“Only seven of the vehicles made it. In those seven vehicles that managed to pass there were seven confirmed deaths. Very few of them had been shot and injured, but they are still alive.
“The other 10 vehicles never made it through. They are missing and basically they are all supposed to have died. “
With hundreds of expatriates initially trapped in the city after the attack, private security contractors had warned of the risk of an “outright bloodbath.”
Between 50 and 60 people, mostly foreigners, were in the 10 missing vehicles. It is feared that all were killed in the attack in what the US embassy in Maputo calls a “dire situation.”
Amid considerable confusion over the situation, a spokesman for Mozambique’s security and defense forces confirmed the deaths of seven people in the convoy, including foreigners, adding that hundreds of other people, both local and foreign, had been rescued. from the city.
Omar Saranga added that “dozens” more people died in the city during the fighting.
The city of Palma in Cabo Delgado province was attacked by Islamist insurgents on Wednesday, and witnesses reported seeing dead bodies in the streets after insurgents, believed to be affiliated with the Isis terror group, attacked Palma from three directions.
It is understood that among those in the evacuation convoy there are many foreign and Mozambican workers.
Those who took refuge in the hotel had initially been told that they would be rescued by boat Thursday from a nearby beach with helicopters that would provide aerial protection, but when the boats did not arrive, they decided to flee on Friday.
Audio describing the response to the attack narrated scenes of carnage as at least one private security contractor struggled to respond to rescue personnel while others ran out of fuel and ammunition.
According to the audio describing the situation after the attack, transmitted to the Guardian, another 150 people had been besieged in a compound at the Amarula Hotel without ammunition and had sent a final SOS saying that they did not “expect to pass through the night.”
Total’s security teams described that their boats had been attacked and were unable to evacuate from a nearby beach.
Human Rights Watch said witnesses described seeing “corpses in the streets and residents fleeing after … combatants fired indiscriminately at people and buildings.”
A spokesman for the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office said: “Our high commission in Maputo is in direct contact with the Cabo Delgado authorities to urgently seek further information on these reports.”
According to other accounts, almost the entire town was destroyed in the attack. “While the locals fled to the mountains, the workers of the LNG companies, including foreigners, took refuge in the Amarula Hotel, where they hope to be rescued,” a worker told the AFP news agency, on condition of anonymity.
The Mozambican army was reported to be fighting with its own dead and wounded from the attack after being completely overrun.
The Mozambican insurgents are known locally as al-Shabaab, although they have no known connection to the Somali jihadist rebels of that name. The rebels have been active in the Cabo Delgado province since 2017, but their attacks have become much more frequent and deadly over the past year. The three-year insurgency by rebels, mainly disgruntled Muslim youth, in the northern province of Cabo Delgado has claimed more than 2,600 lives and displaced some 670,000 people, according to the UN.
