ISIS-aligned fighters reportedly beheaded at least nine Christians and razed churches across northern Mozambique in July, forcing more than 46,000 people — nearly 60% of them children — to flee.
The spasm of violence in Cabo Delgado province was trumpeted in 20 propaganda photos released this week by the Islamic State Mozambique Province, which showed jihadists burning a church, looting homes and displaying severed heads, according to the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI). MEMRI said the same cell boasted of four raids between July 20 and 28 that left Christian villages “deserted and in flames.” (RELATED: REPORT: Militants Shouting ‘Allahu Akhbar’ Kill 200 Christians, Burn Some Victims Alive)
“What we see in Africa today is a kind of silent genocide or silent, brutal, savage war that is occurring in the shadows and all too often ignored by the international community,” MEMRI vice president and former U.S. diplomat Alberto Miguel Fernandez told Fox News Digital on Thursday.
People pass by a billboard celebrating the next arrival of Pope Francis on September 4, 2019 near Andohalo Cathedral in Antananarivo as Pope Francis arrived in Mozambique. (Photo by RIJASOLO / AFP) (Photo by RIJASOLO/AFP via Getty Images)
Fernandez warned that Islamic State offshoots now threaten to “take over … several countries” as they push beyond remote safe havens. His institute also tracked a July 27 assault in Komanda, Democratic Republic of the Congo, where Islamic State Central Africa Province gunmen opened fire on a Catholic church and torched dozens of buildings, killing at least 45 people, according to the outlet.
While the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs has not published a death toll for the Mozambique raids, its data show one million residents have already been uprooted by the eight-year insurgency. The latest wave of beheadings and arson drove families from three districts in less than ten days, an International Organization for Migration (IOM) “movement alert” said.
Cabo Delgado’s porous coastline and lucrative ruby and natural-gas deposits give jihadists both sanctuary and spoils, according to the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime and Reuters, respectively. Mozambican forces, backed by Rwandan troops, have struggled to contain the guerrillas despite major offensives since 2021.
Doctors Without Borders has rushed emergency teams to overcrowded camps in Chiure district, warning that displaced families lack clean water and medical care.
Mozambique’s government has yet to release an official casualty count for the July attacks. Fernandez argues that until Western capitals treat the campaign as the same ISIS menace “very strongly defeated” in Iraq and Syria, Christian communities in Africa will be “targeted and destroyed.”
