Nearly 60,000 displaced in 2 weeks by north Mozambique insurgency

Mozambique

Maputo – Nearly 60,000 people have fled jihadist attacks in northern Mozambique in two weeks, a UN agency said Tuesday.

A group affiliated with the Islamic State, which leads a bloody insurgency that has ravaged the province of Cabo Delgado since 2017, has claimed responsibility for five attacks since late July.

“Between 20 July – 03 August 2025, escalating attacks and heightened fear of violence by Non-State Armed Groups (NSAGs) in Muidumbe, Ancuabe and Chiure districts led to the displacement of approximately 57,034 individuals (13,343 families) as of 03 August 2025,” the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) said in a statement.

The influx of displaced people – most of them fleeing on foot – is the highest since February 2024, when 98,000 people had fled Chiure.

“People continue to arrive daily from conflict-affected areas, and humanitarian partners are preparing to assist up to 60,000 people in the coming days,” said Paola Emerson, who heads the Mozambique branch of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

“So far, around 30,000 displaced people have received food, water, shelter, and essential household items,” she told AFP.

“The response, however, is not yet at the scale required to meet growing needs.”

The situation is aggravated by the fact that “the 2025 Humanitarian Response Plan for Mozambique is only 19 percent funded”, she said, in a context of cuts to international aid by the United States and other countries.

“Funding cuts mean life-saving aid is being scaled back,” the OCHA representative said.

“Over one million people risk losing access to food, water, and shelter. Meeting the needs of the newly displaced will be increasingly difficult.”

More than 6,100 people have been killed since the beginning of the insurrection, according to conflict tracker ACLED, including 364 last year according to data from the Africa Centre for Strategic Studies.

Construction on a massive liquefied natural gas (LNG) project by TotalEnergies near the port town of Palma has been stalled since a deadly attack in March 2021 that made over 800 victims, according to ACLED.

The French fossil fuel giant has said it hopes to re-ignite the $20 billion gas project this summer.

 

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