Assailants linked to Islamic State group behead 50 villagers in Northern Mozambique

Attackers linked to the Islamic State group (ISIL) beheaded and dismembered more than 50 people in the Cabo Delgado region of Northern Mozambique, police said.

Violence has been going on in the region over the last three days, Al Jazeera reported.

According to Bernardino Rafael, the Commander General of Mozambique Police, the group of ISIL-linked attackers have attacked several villages in the districts of Miudumbe and Macomia. The assailants burned down homes and attacked women and children.

Deadly raids

On November 6, after raiding homes in the  Nanjaba village, gunmen fired shots and set homes alight, survivors told Mozambique's news channels.

Another group of radicals attacked Muatide village where they beheaded more than 50 people.

In the attacks that were carried out from November 6 to November 8, many villagers were beheaded and chopped to pieces. Dismembered bodies of at least five adults and 15 boys were found on November 9 scattered across a forest clearing in the Muatide village.

Witnesses told the local media that the attackers took the victims to a football field in one of the villages, Muatide, and carried out killings.

This has been an ongoing battle between the police and the group since it pledged allegiance to ISIL in 2017.

Unrest in the region has led to the death of at least 2,000 people in the region with more than half of them civilians, according to the US-based Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project.

An aid worker in Mueda, who declined to be named, confirmed the killings had taken place, saying some of the boys had come from that area. According to her, body parts of the deceased had been sent to the families to conduct funerals on November 11.

“Funerals were held in an environment of great pain,” said the worker. “The bodies were already decomposing and couldn’t be shown to those present.”