A series of deadly attacks across northern Mozambique has shaken the region in the aftermath of a cyclone disaster.
According to the local anti-corruption NGO, Centre for Public Integrity (CIP), at least 13 people have been killed in attacks this month in remote villages across Cabo Delgado province, which was badly damaged by flooding after Cyclone Kenneth hit the coastal nation in late April.
Over the past two years, an armed group has launched sporadic attacks on villages in the province, killing more than 200 people, according to the AFP news agency.
Amid widespread public suspicion that a local Muslim group is behind the attacks, President Filipe Nyusi rejected the theory at a rally on Friday.
“There is someone commanding them. They have an objective. Let them tell us what this objective is, that they can say ‘I am a Muslim,'” he told crowds in Funhalouro, a rural district in south-eastern Mozambique, Mozambican news agency AIM reported.
“They camouflage themselves as Muslims, but we think this is a mask they are putting on,” the president added.
CIP, whose observers have been stationed at voter registration stations in the area before the general election in October, said that armed groups attacked several villages in Cabo Delgado between May 3 and 5, killing 13 people.
In Nacate, a village around 200km northwest of Pemba, which was badly affected by Cyclone Kenneth, an armed group raided a local food storage facility and killed one person, while the group also attacked homes in the village, killing six people.
In Minhanha, a village in the neighbouring district of Meluco, unknown gunmen reportedly killed three people and burned over 100 houses temporarily disrupting the election registration process.
CIP said that four people were killed in the villages of Ntapuala and Banga.
Zenaida Machado, a researcher at Human Rights Watch, told Al Jazeera the violence was due to a security weakness in some areas.
“The violence continues because the insurgents have found a terrain where they can strike without meeting a strong resistance,” she said in an email.
