The World Food Program (WFP) announced on Saturday that it had suspended its evacuation flights from the Afungi peninsula in northern Mozambique for security reasons, nine days after the jihadist attack in the city of Palma.
Read also :Mozambique: jihadists sow death in Palma
On March 24, armed groups attacked Palma, a port city of 75,000 inhabitants, killing dozens of civilians, police and soldiers. The carefully prepared raid, launched just a few kilometers from the French group Total’s mega-gas project, on the Afungi peninsula, has been claimed by the Islamic State (IS) group.
The UN agency has helped airlift the most vulnerable to the provincial capital, but flights have been suspended since Friday.
«Due to the deteriorating security situation, we have for the moment temporarily interrupted evacuation flights from Afungi to Pemba with the United Nations Humanitarian Air Service (UNHAS), managed by WFP.“, Told AFP his spokesperson, Shelley Thakral.
Since March 25, WFP has evacuated 380 people, mainly women and children.
Nearly 10,000 people were displaced by the attack, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM). Some 23,000 others are still in the Afungi region, under military protection, according to the IOM.
A military source in Maputo told AFP on Friday that Total had evacuated all staff from its gas site. According to a security source, rebels have been spotted in recent days near the Total site.
Before the Palma attack, 2,600 people, half of them civilians, had already died in more than 800 jihadist attacks in the past three years.
– .
