Free Republic

A sharp increase in militant attacks in Mozambique's northern province of Cabo Delgado has forced the government to reassess its strategy against the Islamist insurgency. It has invited in US military advisers to support its own armed forces in the conflict. What is the role of US forces? The agreement between the Mozambican and US governments is for American soldiers to train local forces fighting the al-Shabaab militia - believed to have links to the wider Islamic state group (IS). "US special operations forces... will support Mozambique's efforts to prevent the spread of terrorism and violent extremism," the US embassy...

With a small military training program, the United States military has joined efforts to fight a brutal insurgency that has devastated northern Mozambique. American Special Forces soldiers began training Mozambican troops this week as part of an effort to repel a spreading insurgency in northeastern Mozambique that American officials say is linked to the Islamic State. The insurgency, near some of the world’s biggest gas reserves, has killed at least 2,000 civilians and displaced another 670,000. The American program is modest in size and scope: a dozen Army Green Berets are to train Mozambican marines for the next two months....

In South Africa, about 150 km west of port Maputo, Mozambique, a giant stone city has been discovered. It became possible to determine the age of the site by measuring the erosion rate of the dolerite. The 1500 square kilometre metropolis was believed to have been built between 160,000 and 200,000 years ago!

TWENTY per cent of the population of Cabo Delgado, in the northernmost part of Mozambique, have fled for their lives in the face of an Islamist insurgency that has killed more than 2200 people this year. The attacks by jihadist groups linked to Islamic State have intensified since they began three years ago. Predominantly agricultural, Cabo Delgado also has newly discovered large oil and gas fields, which continue to operate despite the attacks. The area still has huge untapped oil and gas reserves, estimated to be worth $60 billion. Bishop Manuel Ernesto, of the newly formed missionary diocese of Nampula,...

<p>PEMBA: The gunfire broke out before dawn, waking Aziza Falume as the jihadists mounted a new attack in their campaign in northern Mozambique.</p><p>Nine months pregnant, with no news of her fisherman husband, she had no choice but to flee.</p>

<p>Islamist militants in Mozambique killed two dozen soldiers in an ambush attack, military sources told AFP, a significant show of force against the military's struggle to quell an insurgency in the north.</p><p>A shadowy jihadist group has wreaked havoc in the northern Cabo Delgado region since 2017, targeting villages and towns in a bid to establish an Islamist caliphate.</p>

PEMBA, MOZAMBIQUE - Aid groups in northern Mozambique say attacks on civilians have displaced close to 400,000 people during three years of Islamist terrorism. Fifty-year-old Matumba Mussa said armed men showed up at his house in the port town of Mocímboa da Praia one October night and demanded he call his relatives. After his three brothers arrived, the men set fire to his house and three others, then took his brothers into the forest, according to Mussa. Three days later, he said, dismembered bodies were found in the forest. Insurgents linked to Islamic State took over Mocímboa da Praia in...

TERRIFYING ISIS-linked militants have beheaded more than 50 men and boys in two horrifying attacks in northern Mozambique. ISIS: Mozambique President calls for EU aid to stop attacks The militants chopped up the bodies of the victims on a football ground in the Cabo Delgado province. It is believed the women in Ninjaba village were all kidnapped. Several people were also beheaded in another village, according to state media. Bernardino Rafael, commander-general of Mozambique’s police, said during a press conference: “They burned the houses then went after the population who had fled to the woods and started with their macabre...

ISLAMIC State is taking over swathes of Africa like it did in Syria and Iraq with "staggeringly brutal" tactics, the Pentagon has warned. According to a report from West Point, the US officer training academy, the group's expansion and regrouping on the continent shows "Islamic State is far from defeated". "By the summer of 2020, it had become resolutely clear that the Islamic State was a changed organisation, but by no means a beaten one," the report, published by West Point’s Combating Terrorism Centre, said. The Pentagon report said there has been a "marked upward curve of claimed cumulative attacks...

ISIS militants have taken over paradise islands in the Indian Ocean, burning down hotels and imposing Sharia Law. Luxury islands off the coast of Mozambique, where A-list celebrities spend their holidays, have been overrun by insurgents linked to Islamic State. Luxury hotels, wildlife, and homes have been torched and "reduced to ashes" in the militant attacks. The ISIS insurgents have ordered residents to abandon the islands of Vamizi and Mecungo - where celebrities like Daniel Craig, Bono and Prince Albert of Monaco have holidayed in luxury. Footballer Cristiano Ronaldo and political leader Nelson Mandela have also been known to have...

On this date in 1986, African National Congress cadre Andrew Sibusiso Zondo was hanged in Pretoria nine months after bombing a shopping center near Durban, with five white fatalities. Zondo claimed he had intended to non-fatally target the South African Airways office at Amanzimtoti’s Sanlam Centre, but couldn’t find a functioning, available telephone in time to phone in his attempted bomb warning. Did we mention that he was 19? Zondo, it turned out, had been radicalized by South African security forces’ indiscriminate violence against claimed ANC “strongholds” — and specifically by a still-infamous attack, the “Matola raids,” on neighboring Mozambique....

Since the devastating explosion of a store of ammonium nitrate in Beirut’s port on August 4, Lebanese citizens have taken to the streets in shock, outrage, and grief. Above all, they have demanded answers: Where did the nearly 3,000 tons of explosive chemicals come from, and who owned it? Why did the rickety ship that brought the hazardous material to Lebanon end up stranded in the city’s port in late 2013? And how could the impounded chemicals sit for over half a decade in an unsafe warehouse before tragedy finally struck? In Lebanon itself, the causes of the disaster appear...

“Goods were being transported from one country to another, and they ended up in a third country with nobody owning the goods. Why did they end up here?” said Ghassan Hasbani, a former Lebanese deputy prime minister and opposition figure. Those linked to the shipment and interviewed by Reuters all denied knowledge of the cargo’s original owner or declined to answer the question. Those who said they didn’t know included the ship’s captain, the Georgian fertilizer maker who produced the cargo and the African firm that ordered it but said it never paid for it.

Mozambique: Islamic State captures key port, establishes its first outpost in southern Africa, imposes Sharia AUG 19, 2020 3:00 PM BY ROBERT SPENCER The desire to restore the caliphate is not discarded after setbacks. The service of Allah is not negated by setbacks. The jihad continues, and will continue, while the world yawns and tends to other matters. “Islamic State now has its first outpost in southern Africa after capture of key port in Mozambique,” by Julian Kossoff, Business Insider, August 17, 2020: Mozambique has become the latest African stronghold of Islamic State (IS) after well-armed insurgents captured a strategic...

...The Rhosus left for its last journey from Batumi, Georgia, in September 2013. Its cargo was destined for Mozambique, but the captain was ordered to make an unscheduled stop in Beirut to take on additional freight. Captain Prokoshev said they needed to make extra cash to pay for their passage through the Suez Canal. Lawyers for the ship’s creditors said the additional cargo was supposed to be transported to Jordan. ...The Rhosus was left abandoned, and Lebanese authorities transferred its cargo to a warehouse in the port. In 2015, the ship was moved 1,000 feet up the pier where it...

Mozambique: Muslims burn churches, kidnap young girls, behead people, displace 1000s in escalating jihad violence JUL 26, 2020 11:00 AM BY CHRISTINE DOUGLASS-WILLIAMS “Bishop Luiz Fernando Lisboa of Mozambique’s Pemba diocese has been an outspoken advocate for the needs of the more than 200,000 people who have been displaced by the violent insurgency.” Lisboa states rightly: “The world has no idea yet what is happening because of indifference.” If the world truly cared about black lives, there would be a loud outcry over the genocide of black African Christians that is continuing and escalating. There would also be international outrage...

Its happening here in the USA the arrest of a mother who asked questions when confronted by police enforcing de facto martial law related to the coronavirus.... The price of oil today with the West Texas Intermediate price at 14.23 a barrel by 530 pm Eastern US time..... The meat supply in the United States being impacted by the coronavirus. The US Department of Agriculture reporting beef production down 20 percent for this month compared to April of last year..... Another example of a food processing facility affected by coronavirus is in Alabama where at least 75 cases have been...

<p>As Mozambique battles to control a fast-spreading cholera outbreak in the cyclone-hit central city of Beira, international assistance is arriving. The number of cholera cases jumped to 271 over the weekend although no deaths from the disease had been reported. More than 500 people have died in Mozambique from Cyclone Idai, which slammed into Beira more than two weeks ago, according to government officials. Another 250 died in neighboring Zimbabwe and Malawi. The Chinese government has sent doctors to battle the cholera outbreak in Beira, a port city of 500,000. Chinese aid workers sprayed anti-cholera disinfectant in parts of Beira Sunday. The World Health Organization has said some 900,000 cholera vaccine doses are expected to arrive on Monday, with a vaccination campaign to start later this week.</p>

More than 1,000 people were feared dead in Mozambique four days after a cyclone slammed into the country, submerging entire villages and leaving bodies floating in the floodwaters, the nation's president said. "It is a real disaster of great proportions," President Filipe Nyusi said. Cyclone Idai could prove to be the deadliest storm in generations to hit the impoverished southeast African country of 30 million people. It struck Beira, an Indian Ocean port city of a half-million people, late Thursday and then moved inland to Zimbabwe and Malawi with strong winds and heavy rain. But it took days for the...

Court Orders Discovery to Begin on Clinton Email / Benghazi Scandals Documents Detail Nancy Pelosi’s CODEL Travel in 2015 U.S. Doles Out Millions to Costa Rica & Mozambique During Shutdown The Murder Epidemic in Indian Country Now We’re Providing Sex-Change Surgery to Convicted Child Sex Abusers Court Orders Discovery to Begin on Clinton Email / Benghazi Scandals Last week, I reported to you that we had submitted a court-ordered discovery plan for the depositions of several top former government officials involved in the Clinton email scandal, including Obama administration senior officials Susan Rice, Ben Rhodes, Jacob Sullivan, and FBI...