Norway delivers €900M

Norway has delivered support worth around €900,000 for emergency humanitarian operations in Cabo Delgado province, northern Mozambique, the World Food Programme (WFP) said in a statement. “The contribution will allow WFP to support 32,000 internally displaced people through food assistance in kind for two months,” said the UN agency.The armed attacks in the region have displaced by September 2020 more than 300,000 people who are seeking refuge in Nampula, Niassa and Zambezia provinces and WFP has assisted about two-thirds, in collaboration with local authorities and humanitarian partners.

 “The response mainly consists of the distribution of food, the treatment of malnutrition and communication for social and behavioural change,” WFP said. Tom Edvard Eriksen, in charge of business at the Norwegian Embassy in Mozambique, quoted in the communiqué, described the situation in Cabo Delgado as a great sadness. “For us, who have formally cooperated with Mozambique for over 40 years, it is a great sadness to see a whole development effort collapsed, first by cyclones Idai and Kenneth, which hit the country in March and April 2019, and now increasingly by an armed insurgency in northern Cabo Delgado,” he said.

“Our attention in recent times has turned to the difficult situation in Cabo Delgado. We also hope that, in addition to food support, the necessary facilities can be built to help prevent community contamination by Covid-19,” he added. Antonella D’Aprile, a WFP representative in Mozambique, fears that “the negative impacts of climate change, the massive displacement of people due to insecurity and the Covid-19 crisis, have caused a complex humanitarian crisis in Cabo Delgado,” she said. WFP’s regional director for Southern Africa, Lola Castro, on Monday warned of the situation in Cabo Delgado. Food insecurity in the province was highlighted as one of the most worrying situations on the map of southern Africa during a press conference with foreign correspondents in South Africa. Aid does not always reach some districts in the northeast and WFP tries to find alternatives to reach the inaccessible and provide them with food aid, shelter and protection, she stressed. Mozambique had, by Sunday September 13,  a total of 5 ,269 cases of Covid-19, with 35 deaths and 2,960 recoveries .

TERRORISTS BLOCKED IN MUIDUMBE DISTRICT

The Mozambican defence and security forces have blocked the advance of islamist terrorists into Muidumbe district, in the northern province of Cabo Delgado, reports Friday’s issue of the independent newssheet “Carta de Mocambique”. The newsheet says that last Sunday, in the Muidumbe locality of Miengueleua, the Mozambican forces killed several terrorists (the exact number was not given) and seized an unspecified amount of weaponry. On Tuesday, in Muambula village, also in Muidumbe, a man described as a ringleader of the terrorists was captured. He was denounced to the authorities by the villagers after he arrived in Muambula on Monday night. He has been taken to Mueda district, which houses the headquarters of the Mozambican military in Cabo Delgado. In Mbau administrative post, in Mocimboa da Praia district, five control posts set up by the terrorists and 21 huts were destroyed. In these operations nine members of the group, known as “Ansa Al-sunna”, or “Al-Shabaab”, were killed.

However, Mocimboa da Praia town, overrun by the terrorists in August, remains in their hands. There are also signs that terrorists have moved into Ancuabe, a district that has not previously suffered from terrorist raids. In the Ancuabe village of Nanjaua, three bodies, all of them beheaded, were discovered last Monday night. Since beheadings have become a grisly trade mark of the terrorists, this discovery is taken as an indication that a terrorist unit has passed through the area.