Because of the Total plant. IS seized a city in Mozambique

Economically weak, but rich in natural resources, the country has been terrorized since 2017.

The terrorist organization Islamic State claimed responsibility for the seizure of the city of Palma in northern Mozambique. Dozens of people – both locals and foreigners – were killed, and thousands became refugees.

The French oil and gas company Total is building a liquefied natural gas plant near the city; work has now been suspended. Correspondent.net tells the details.

35 thousand refugees

Militants of the Islamic State terrorist group have seized control of the 75,000-strong city of Palma, which is located in the north of the African state of Mozambique. The offensive began on March 24th.

Several dozen residents were beheaded, more than two dozen Mozambican soldiers were killed, two-thirds of the city was burned, 35 thousand people fled to the forests, neighboring settlements, as well as to nearby Tanzania.

Total employees, including foreigners, took refuge in the Amarula Hotel. Three days later, the Mozambican authorities evacuated about 180 people from the hotel. The militants attacked the convoy of evacuees, as a result of which several people died.

“The convoy of 17 trucks was attacked shortly after leaving Amarula … Only seven trucks managed to reach their destination, the route of the remaining vehicles is unknown,” AFP reports, citing a source in the security forces.

In total, there were about 80 people in the trucks. As the agency notes, the rest of the people who were in the hotel walked to the local beach, from where the military evacuated them in boats. According to the source, the military continues to search for people who were evacuated in trucks.

On March 28, the DW edition reported that the ship with 1.8 thousand people on board arrived from the captured Palma to the city of Pemba, located 245 kilometers south of the city, the administrative center of the province of Cabo Delgado.

Among the evacuees are more than a thousand workers and specialists from a gas processing and liquefaction complex under construction ten kilometers from Palma. Total’s management announced that it is temporarily suspending all work at the facility and moving its personnel to a safer location.

The reason for the attack is the Total plant

The attack came immediately after the government of Mozambique and the French oil company announced a gradual reopening of work on the $ 23 billion Afunji complex. It should be commissioned in 2024.

It is planned to produce gas in the deep-water fields Golfinho and Atum in the Indian Ocean on the shelf of Mozambique. Probably, the main goal of ISIS was to prevent the construction of the plant and the development of the Mozambique LNG project, on which the country’s government relies heavily.

Gas deposits were discovered offshore and in the Rovuma and Mozambique river basins in 2011, attracting leading production and service companies to Mozambique, including Total, ExxonMobile, Mitsui, Oil India and others.

Gas reserves in the Rovuma river basin are estimated at 2.2 trillion cubic meters, in the Mozambique river basin – at 95 billion cubic meters, on the shelf – up to 56 billion cubic meters. This is one of the richest places in Africa.

As noted by Bloomberg, the activation of terrorists in Mozambique threatens the plans of the world’s largest energy companies to invest about $ 120 billion in the implementation of a gas project in this country.

This is eight times the country’s annual gross domestic product. Thus, the possibility of the implementation of the most significant private project in the history of Africa is called into question, the newspaper emphasizes.

“The later Mozambique enters the liquefied gas market, the greater the risk that demand for this product will be lower than forecast,” said Adrienne Benass, a spokesman for Fitch.

According to Bloomberg, in the future, the rates for Mozambique are even higher, since the country’s authorities – the sixth among the poorest according to the World Bank – expects to receive $ 96 billion from the implementation of gas liquefaction projects.

What Islamists are doing in Mozambique

In the north of Mozambique, primarily in the province of Cabo Delgado, since 2017, the al-Shabab group, which has sworn to ISIS, and the structures of the Islamic State – the Central African province of IS, have been operating.

The leaders of these groups aim to create an Islamist state on the territory of Mozambique. Terrorists have already seized several islands off the coast of Mozambique that are popular with wealthy tourists.

More than 2.6 thousand people died at the hands of militants. Most of the local residents were expelled by the militants, and the women were turned into sex slaves. According to UN estimates, more than 570,000 residents of the province of Cabo Delgado have become refugees.

In economically weak Mozambique, where the population is dissatisfied with the authorities, terrorists find support, writes Professor Theo Nitling of the South African Free State University in his report on the causes of extremism in northern Mozambique.

“Mozambique is the eighth poorest country in the world. Cabo Delgado is the poorest province in Mozambique. At the same time, there are huge reserves of natural resources. is the driving force behind the conflict, “said Chance Briggs, head of Save the Children in Mozambique.

Human rights activists working in the region also reported that the Mozambican military also exceeded their powers, carrying out arbitrary arrests, torture and killings during special operations against jihadists.

The activities of ISIS militants in Africa, experts say, surpass the activities of members of the organization in Syria and Iraq in scale and cruelty.

On March 16, 2021, Save the Children, a humanitarian organization that helps children in hot spots, reported that militants were beheading children in front of their mothers.

As the Swedish publication Dagens Nyheter noted earlier, around the same time that the pandemic began to spread from continent to continent, ISIS intensified its terrorist activities.

Experts, assessing the striking power of ISIS, say that the organization has enough money: according to estimates, in Iraq alone, terrorists earn more than $ 7 million a month on blackmail, “protection” and various illegal transactions.

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