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- Unicef says 125 schools have been closed, including 109 in Cabo Delgado and 16 in the Memba District of Nampula, since January.
- In Cabo Delgado's Chiure district, there's disinformation and violence, with attacks on cholera treatment infrastructure and staff.
- The SADC and Rwandan Defence Force estimated that they were faced with 160 to 200 battle-hardened insurgent fighters.
Jihadism in north Mozambique is hitting schools and displacing mostly women and children, according to a flash report by the United Nations Children's Fund (Unicef).
More than 70 000 people have been internally displaced in Mozambique's insurgent-hit oil gas-rich Cabo Delgado and neighbouring Nampula Province since January this year. Among those, 85% of were women, Unicef said.
Its report highlights that Cabo Delgado saw more than a hundred schools shut down, with another 16 closed in the Memba District of Nampula Province.
Unicef fears the current displacements will aggravate an already critical situation owing to cholera outbreaks in the six districts of Cabo Delgado and Nampula, but "teams are following up with host families to ensure appropriate case-area targeted intervention activities are conducted".
There are challenges in the Chiure district of Cabo Delgado where cholera is treated like a myth, leading to "disinformation and violence, with populations attacking cholera treatment infrastructure and staff."
READ MORE | Displaced Mozambicans recall the terror of new jihadist attacks as they flee south
According to the report, 10 900 people or 2 500 households are in seven displacement sites within Chiure (Maningane, Muajaja, Kuphe, Namitua, Nahavara, Meriha, and Namisir); an undetermined number of internally displaced persons (IDPs) are staying with host communities.
Hunger is also one of the challenges and Unicef is "screening and treating children and pregnant women for acute malnutrition" in Chiure.
With limited funding the World Food Programme (WFP) in Mocímboa da Praia announced on 21 January that it would limit supplies to serve exclusively orphans, but that sparked rage from locals.
The locals argued that the conflict didn't only affect orphans.
However, while the WFP explained that it was distributing aid based on "vulnerability-based targeting", the agency suggested that the community should invest in local agriculture to plug the gap.
Conflict
Since November 2017, violence has been perpetrated by non-state armed groups linked to the Islamic State (ISIS) Mozambique, also called Ansar al-Sunna and locally known as al-Shabaab (unrelated to the Somali terrorist group).
The insurgency is motivated by the perceived socio-economic exclusion of locals amid major mineral and hydrocarbon discoveries, also known as liquefied natural gas, which brought investment from TotalEnergies.
In an attempt to fight the insurgents, SADC has its standby force in place operating separately from the Rwanda Defence Force (RDF), which has a similar mandate.
The latest report from the United Nations Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team said SADC and RDF estimated that they were dealing with about "160 to 200 battle-hardened fighters".
In December last year, Alexandre Surikov, the Russian ambassador to Mozambique said Moscow was ready to help Mozambique fight the insurgents but from the look of things, the situation was not bad.
However, "if they (Mozambique) need any specific help, we are always by their side", said the Russian ambassador.
A summary situation report by data aggregator, ACLED, for the period 20 January to 2 February, shows that the first attack during that period was on 28 January, when insurgents beheaded a man in the fields in the Pulo forest in Metuge, near Ancuabe.
The Metuge district administration verified the killing, and the Islamic State (IS) claimed responsibility for detaining and executing a person in the area.
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