Embassy in Mozambique's capital Maputo announced the start of a two-month military training program that will see American Special Operations Forces train Mozambican marines, "to support Mozambique's efforts to prevent the spread of terrorism and violent extremism." Special Forces (right) participate in a ceremony to launch a Joint Combined Exchange Training program with Mozambican marines (left) in a photo provided by the U.S. is convinced the group's link to ISIS is clear - particularly, as one senior State Department officials told us - when you look at their battlefield tactics, which have developed and evolved. Two years ago, more than 150 soldiers-for-hire from the Russian Wagner Group, a Kremlin-linked private military company, flew into Cabo Delgado. Mozambique's response has been hampered in part by divisions between the country's military and its powerful police force, leading the government to turn to private soldiers for help. Many of the refugee camps in the area have doubled in size over the last three months alone, giving some sense of the speed at which the crisis has snowballed. Internally displaced people gather for a community meeting in the Tara Tara district of Matuge, in northern Mozambique's Cabo Delgado region, February 24, 2021.Ī terror group that numbered perhaps a couple of dozen fighters at the end of 2017 is now estimated to have swollen its ranks to as many as 800 fighters, with the ability to carry out strikes in neighboring Tanzania, where analysts believe it has links with smuggling and criminal networks that provide weapons and other equipment. military officers and diplomats in the region and Mozambique's own counterterrorism officials - by surprise. This sudden acceleration, coupled with the extreme brutality, has taken everyone - including U.S. Cabo Delgado has had a festering insurgency for more than three years, but the past year has seen a dramatic escalation of the conflict. Mozambique has struggled to counter the insurgency, and it is certainly nowhere near winning the fight. The charity's director said the reports "sicken us to the core." Struggling to respond
Save the Children's report said it has largely been young boys killed by the militants, while girls are often captured and forced to "marry" the jihadists – forced, in other words, to become sex slaves.
She said she hid with her three other children as he was murdered nearby. One mother described to the charity her ordeal as she tried to flee into the woods with her children, but the armed men attacker her village grabbed her eldest son, who was 12. Save the Children said in a report released on Tuesday that it has received reports of kids as young as 11 being beheaded.
Stories of sickening acts of violence against children abound. "I don't know if they took my granddaughter to marry her or kill her," he said. Alberto Carlos can only guess what happened to his 14-year-old granddaughter.