This archive report was first published on 5 May 2021.
Maputo, Mozambique, May 5, 2021 – The northern Mozambican town of Palma remains deeply traumatised six weeks after it was raided by Islamic State-linked fighters, with hundreds of its residents fleeing each day, survivors and aid workers say.
The attack on March 24, 2021, killed dozens of people and triggered an exodus that included workers on a multi-billion-dollar liquefied natural gas (LNG) project.
The violence marked a major intensification in an insurgency that has wreaked havoc across Cabo Delgado province for over three years as the militants seek to establish a caliphate.
France's Total suspended work on the nearby LNG scheme, one of Africa's largest, following the attack, which also claimed the lives of several expatriate oil workers.
Despite the government's claim that its forces had driven out the extremists and that calm had returned, many people still feel unsafe and are leaving the area.
According to aid workers, hundreds of people have landed in the provincial capital Pemba on privately-organised rescue boats in recent days.
One of those who fled was Viaze Juma, a 34-year-old mother of four, who arrived in Pemba on Friday from Afungi, a peninsula near the heavily-guarded gas plant and five kilometres south of Palma.
"It's good that now I'm out of Palma. I'm safe but my house was burned down," she told AFP.
The United Nations announced that the number of internally displaced persons (IDPs) had breached the 30,000 mark, with the number increasing to 36,288 just four days later.
Further inland, in Mueda and Nangade, up to 40 families arrive each day on foot, aid workers say.
The true picture of the security situation in Palma remains obscure due to restricted access to the town for both the media and humanitarian organisations.
However, the flight of tens of thousands of civilians in a month-and-a-half – 6,000 of them in less than a week – shows that order has not yet been fully restored.
"The situation in Palma is very unstable, (with) shooting at night," said an aid worker in Mueda, around 180 kilometres (110 miles) southwest of Palma.
"It's a place where you cannot sleep thinking you are going to wake up with no problems," added the worker, who asked not to be named.
