MAPUTO: Suspected militants attacked a string of police stations in a small town in northern Mozambique killing two policemen but 14 of the gunmen were slain, police said on Saturday.
Police have been slow in releasing details of the attacks which occurred on Thursday and Friday in Mocimboa de Praia.
"We recorded 14 deaths and several bandits were wounded," police spokesman Inacio Dina told AFP. Police said the attacks were coordinated.
Local media said three police stations in the sleepy town, 80 km from natural gas fields, were targeted.
At a news conference on Thursday, Dina suggested the attackers were linked to a homegrown radical sect but gave no details.
Police have so far arrested 10 other gunmen, recovered four firearms and more than 100 rounds of ammunition.
"The motive of the attacks is still unknown," Dina said.
"The way they operated makes us believe that there is a structure behind the group," Dina told AFP, but ruled out any links "between the attackers and external forces".
"There is no evidence that they are members of Al-Shabab or Boko Haram. According to the information gathered, all those captured or killed are Mozambicans," said the police spokesman speaking from the capital Maputo.
A local journalist suggested on social media that the attackers belonged to the virtually unknown group, Swalissuna, which has been in existence for about five years.
"They have specific grievances with the police and aimed the attack at them," tweeted journalist and private media owner Erik Charas.
The attacks lasted two days, until the police dispatched special forces from Pemba, 500 km away.
Armed clashes and assassinations of politicians are not uncommon in Mozambique.
On-and-off clashes have occurred in recent years between government troops and armed militias loyal to opposition party and former rebel movement Renamo.
But a truce unilaterally declared by Renamo in December has been observed with only minor breaches.
16 killed as gunmen attack Mozambique police
16 killed as gunmen attack Mozambique police
Burkina jihadist attacks on army leave at least 10 dead
ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast: Suspected Islamist militants attacked an army unit in northern Burkina Faso Sunday, the latest in a series of alleged jihadist attacks that have killed at least 10 people in four days, security sources told AFP.
The west African country, ruled by a military junta since a 2022 coup, has been plagued with violence from militants allied to Al-Qaeda or the Daesh group for more than a decade.
Social media has been awash with speculation that the spate of attacks may have killed dozens of soldiers, but AFP has been unable to independently verify those claims.
The junta, which seized power on the promise to crack down on the violence, has ceased to communicate on jihadist attacks.
On Sunday, militants carried out a major attack on a military detachment in the northern town of Nare, two security sources told AFP.
The previous day, the Burkinabe army’s unit in the northern city of Titao was “targeted by a group of several hundred terrorists,” one of the sources said.
While the source did not give a death toll for either attack, they said part of the military base in Titao had been destroyed.
The interior minister of Ghana, which borders Burkina Faso to the south, said the government had “received disturbing information from Burkina Faso of a truck carrying tomato traders from Ghana which was caught in a terrorist attack in Titao.”
Jihadist ‘coordination’
According to the same security source, another army base in Tandjari, in the east of the country, was also attacked Saturday, and several officers killed.
“This series of attacks is not a coincidence,” the source said. “There seems to be coordination among the jihadists.”
A separate security source told AFP that a “terrorist group attacked the (military) detachment in Bilanga,” in the east of the country, on Thursday.
“Much of the detachment was ransacked,” the source said, giving a toll of “about 10 deaths” among the soldiers and civilian volunteers fighting alongside the army.
A local source confirmed the attack, adding there was damage in the town of Bilanga, and that the assailants had stayed at the scene until the following day.
Despite the junta’s vow to restore security, Burkina Faso remains caught in a spiral of violence.
According to conflict monitor ACLED, the unrest has killed tens of thousands of civilians and soldiers since 2015 — and more than half of those deaths have come in the past three years.
