Islamist militants attacked the town of Palma last week, and dozens are still missing after a hotel siege and convoy attack
The first that people in the Mozambican city of Palma knew of the attack by Islamist militants was the sound of gunfire that erupted at 4pm on Wednesday afternoon.
A focus of natural gas development in the Indian Ocean, the town, located close to the border with Tanzania, was under sustained attack from two directions by the Isis-affiliated al-Shabaab group, who have mounted a campaign of escalating terror in the northern Cabo Delgado region. The group does not have any known connection to Somalia’s jihadists of that name, and have been active in Cabo Delgado since 2017, but their attacks have become much more frequent and deadly over the past year.
