Palma
Two months after Palma raid, Mozambique survivors still on run
The scramble to escape Quitunda still rages on. Private fishing boats charge the equivalent of between $50 and $80 per trip to Pemba -- a cripplingly steep fare...
In a report compiled from interviews with 11 black survivors, it charged that even dogs were pulled to safety ahead of black people by a helicopter that airlifted civilians from a hotel where they had sought refuge.
The jihadists swooped on the coastal town on March 24, killing dozens of people and triggering an exodus that included workers on a multi-billion-dollar liquefied natural gas (LNG) project.
Islamic State-linked militants raided the coastal town of Palma on 24 March in an assault that marked a major intensification in an insurgency that has wreaked havoc across Cabo Delgado province for over three years as the jihadists seek to establish a caliphate.
Alone after being separated from her family in a jihadist attack, one six-year-old girl wandered through the brush of northern Mozambique for four days before being taken in by Unicef.
On March 24, Islamic-State linked militants launched a strategic, coordinated assault on Palma that overwhelmed security forces and caused French energy giant Total to abandon a nearby gas project.
President Filipe Nyusi - speaking on the eve of a regional summit on the crisis - said his government had made requests for help. He did not give details.
Islamic State-linked militants launched an assault on the town of Palma on March 24, in what is seen as the biggest escalation of a three-year-old insurgency.
Doctors Without Borders project coordinator Luiz Guimaraes in Mozambique said the situation was serious and teams were doing their best to assist those who have been hurt during the conflict.
A series of photographs and videos, passed exclusively to Sky News, offer the first glimpse at the scale of the assault on the town of 52,000 people by the militants.
Eleven days after what is seen as the biggest escalation of the Islamist insurgency ravaging the region since 2017, the true death toll from the coordinated attacks in March remains unknown, with internet and mobile phone networks disrupted.
The jihadists captured Palma on 24 March, ransacking buildings and beheading residents and forcing thousands to seek safety in surrounding forest.
Dozens have been killed and many more are still missing in a coordinated attack seen as the biggest escalation of an Islamist insurgency that has battered Cabo Delgado province since 2017.