Attacks by insurgents in Mozambique are compounding a displacement crisis, especially for children

CAPE TOWN, South Africa — Jihadist insurgents in northern Mozambique have launched new attacks in recent weeks, beheading civilians, burning villages and leaving children orphaned and forced to seek help alone, the United Nations and other humanitarian organizations say.

The spike in violence by Islamic State-linked militants led to more than 100,000 people being displaced in November. Around 70,000 of them were children, according to UNICEF, the United Nations' Children's Fund.

“Many children lost their parents and fled on their own, sometimes following an adult that they didn’t even know," said Xavier Creach, a United Nations refugee agency representative in Mozambique.

The tens of thousands of newly displaced people join around 1.3 million who were forced to flee their homes since the militants launched their insurgency in 2017 in the province of Cabo Delgado on Mozambique's northeast coast.

Mozambique's government has drawn in help from the Rwandan army to try and stem the insurgency but has made little progress. Humanitarian groups say there's a burgeoning crisis, with hundreds of thousands needing food, water, shelter and healthcare as cholera and other diseases break out in displacement camps.

An independent branch of Islamic State

The insurgents, known as Islamic State-Mozambique, are an independent branch of the Islamic State group and want to impose sharia, or Islamic law, according to an assessment by the office of the United States Director of National Intelligence. It estimates Islamic State-Mozambique has around 300 fighters and one of its key leaders is a Tanzanian national.

The group gained notoriety when it launched a 12-day attack on the coastal town of Palma in 2021, killing dozens of security officers, local civilians, and foreign workers and forcing French energy giant Total to halt a $20 billion offshore liquified natural gas project nearby. Total said it intends to restart the project, which is key to Mozambique's development and believed to be the reason for the attack on Palma.

The jihadis had previously concentrated their attacks in the northernmost Cabo Delgado province but are now targeting villages in the neighboring Nampula and Niassa provinces to the south and west. More than 6,300 people have been killed, 2,700 of them civilians, according to Armed Conflict Location and Event Data, a nonprofit group that tracks political violence.

Children abducted and orphaned

UNICEF says there are widespread reports of “grave violations against children,” who are being abducted and recruited by the jihadists and bearing the brunt of the violence.

Other children have lost their parents and fled attacks alone, sometimes walking for five or six days to reach help, according to Creach, the U.N. refugee agency representative.

“They arrive traumatized. Mental health is absolutely a requirement here too,” Creach said in an interview released by the U.N. from the district of Erati in Nampula, which has received tens of thousands of recently displaced people.

UNICEF's Mary Louise Eagleton said the latest displacement of children in northern Mozambique has occurred “at a staggering pace over a short period of time."

Children make up 67% of the total displaced people in northern Mozambique, the U.N. said.

Response at ‘breaking point’

Top officials from the U.N.'s migration agency visited Mozambique earlier this month and said its displacement crisis was one of the most complex in the region, with northern Mozambique also prone to cyclones coming in from the Indian Ocean. Four strong cyclones have hit in the last 12 months, following a crippling drought in 2024.

The overlapping crises have left the humanitarian response at “breaking point,” said Eagleton.

Other humanitarian and rights groups have described the desperate need for food, water, shelter and healthcare support as people live in tents, schools or even in the open under trees.

The Nampula local government mobilized 100 tons of food in November, but it could only feed less than 14,000 people for 15 days, not nearly enough. Human Rights Watch said while children had limited access to healthcare, education and safe shelter, girls were exposed to gender-based violence.

Creach said people would likely risk returning to their homes despite the threat of violence because of the limited humanitarian help available.

“Many will see no option," he said.

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