Islamic insurgents killed three people and kidnapped 11 children in new attacks in northern Mozambique Friday, including on Palma, a key town in a major international gas hub, locals said.It was the first militant attack inside Palma, which is near the site of a massive TotalEnergies LNG project, since an insurgent strike on the town in March 2021 that killed more than 800 people, an analyst said.The 2021 attack led the French energy giant to halt work on the project which it has said it hoped to resume this year.About 15 insurgents entered Palma, around 30 kilometres (20 miles) from the border with Tanzania, shortly after midnight, a local military official told AFP on condition of anonymity.”They entered at least four houses and kidnapped seven girls and killed one person. Another four boys were kidnapped while heading to their homes,” they said.Conflict monitor Acled said it had information that a man was killed and a woman kidnapped. The Islamic State group said in a statement it had killed one person.The Mozambique military, which is supported by Rwandan forces in battling an Islamist insurgency that started in Palma’s Cabo Delgado province in October 2017, rarely comments on attacks.Militants also struck the town of Nangade, about 100 kilometres west of Palma, in the early hours of the morning, a villager told AFP anonymously.”They killed two people and burned a church and some houses. They invaded houses and stalls, stealing goods. They did not stay for long,” the person said. Attacks by Islamic State-linked jihadists have picked up in Cabo Delgado in recent months and there have also been incidents in neighbouring Nampula, according to Acled.Muslim-majority Cabo Delgado is one of the poorest parts of Mozambique but its rich gas fields have drawn some of Africa’s biggest investments, including the TotalEnergies project.Friday’s attack on Palma was the first inside the town since 2021, an NGO security analyst told AFP on condition of anonymity, although there had been others in the surrounding area.”There’s a connection between Total’s resumption and this attack,” the analyst said. “They want to portray a narrative that things aren’t as safe as people say.”Among the more than 800 people killed in the 2021 strike were TotalEnergies subcontractors, according to Acled, which says the insurgency has claimed more than 6,200 lives in eight years.The UN refugee agency said last week that the unrest had caused more than 100,000 people to flee their homes this year, with nearly 22,000 people leaving in a single week in late September.The violence has escalated sharply in 2025, with well over 500 recorded security incidents affecting civilians — higher than any previous year — including raids on villages, abductions, killings and looting, UNHCR’s Mozambique representative Xavier Creach told reporters.
