MAPUTO: Britain advised citizens on Tuesday against traveling to an area in northeastern Mozambique after a series of attacks by groups with links to Islamic militants.
At least 17 people have been killed — 10 of them beheaded -since May in the town of Palma, near the Tanzanian border. The UK joins in the United States in issuing a warning about the attacks.
“The Foreign and Commonwealth Office advise against all but essential travel to the districts of Palma, Mocimboa de Praia and Macomia in Cabo Delgado province due to an increase in attacks by groups with links to Islamic extremism,” the office said in a warning posted on its website. Palma is near one of the world’s biggest untapped offshore gas fields, and Anadarko Petroleum is seeking to raise $14 billion to $15 billion for a liquefied natural gas project in the region.
The company has said it was monitoring the situation. It declined to comment on reports that it has suspended work on its project.
Canada-based Wentworth Resources said the security situation was part of the reason it sought a one-year extension for its appraisal license in the region.
“This has prevented safe access to the area for Wentworth staff and contractors. The Company continues to monitor the situation closely,” it said in statement posted on its website.
Six men wielding machetes killed at least seven people and injured four others this month in the predominantly Muslim region. Ten people were beheaded last month, and local media reported at least two were children.
Mozambique has not been a focal point of militant activity in the past and police have been reluctant to ascribe the attacks to Islamists. About 30 percent of Mozambique’s 30 million people are Roman Catholics; about 18 percent are Muslim.
UK issues travel warning after Mozambique attacks
UK issues travel warning after Mozambique attacks
Russia strikes power plant, kills four in Ukraine barrage
KHARKIV: Russia battered Ukraine with more than two dozen missiles and hundreds of drones early Tuesday, killing four people and pummelling another power plant, piling more pressure on Ukraine’s brittle energy system.
An AFP journalist in the eastern Kharkiv region, where four people were killed, saw firefighters battling a fire at a postal hub and rescue workers helping survivors by lamp light in freezing temperatures.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said “several hundred thousand” households near Kyiv were without power after the strikes, and again called on allies to bolster his country’s air defense systems.
“The world can respond to this Russian terror with new assistance packages for Ukraine,” President Volodymyr Zelensky wrote on social media.
“Russia must come to learn that cold will not help it win the war,” he added.
Authorities in Kyiv and the surrounding region rolled out emergency power cuts in the hours after the attack, saying freezing temperatures were complicating their work.
DTEK, Ukraine’s largest energy provider, said Russian forces had struck one of its power plants, saying it was the eighth such attack since October.
The operator did not reveal which of its plants was struck, but said Russia had attacked its power plants over 220 times since Moscow invaded Ukraine in 2022.
Daily attacks
Moscow has pummelled Ukraine with daily drone and missile barrages in recent months, targeting energy infrastructure and cutting power and heating in the frigid height of winter.
The Ukrainian air force said that Tuesday’s bombardment included 25 missiles and 247 drones.
The Kharkiv governor gave the death toll and added that six people were wounded in the overnight hit outside the region’s main city, also called Kharkiv.
White helmeted emergency workers could be seen clambering through the still-smoking wreckage of a building occupied by postal company Nova Poshta, in a video posted by the regional prosecutor’s office.
Within Ukraine’s second city, Kharkiv Mayor Igor Terekhov said a Russian long-range drone struck a medical facility for children, causing a fire. No casualties were reported.
The overnight strikes hit other regions as well, including southern city Odesa.
Residential buildings, a hospital and a kindergarten were damaged, with at least five people wounded in two waves of attacks, regional governor Sergiy Lysak said.
Russia’s use last week of a nuclear-capable Oreshnik ballistic missile on Ukraine sparked condemnation from Kyiv’s allies, including Washington, which called it a “dangerous and inexplicable escalation of this war.”
Moscow on Monday said the missile hit an aviation repair factory in the Lviv region and that it was fired in response to Ukraine’s attempt to strike one of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s residences — a claim Kyiv denies and that Washington has said it does not believe happened.
