The police general commander appealed this Sunday to the population of Montepuez, in Cabo Delgado, to intensify vigilance against criminals who pretend to be terrorists, create panic in the surrounding communities, scare the populations away and take advantage of these situations to steal their goods.

Evoking recent cases of attacks against localities in the Miteco area, in the interior of Cabo Delgado, the police commander-general, Bernardino Rafael, called on the population to be more vigilant and to collaborate in the identification and accountability of the so-called "false terrorists".

"Be vigilant with people who are taking advantage in those villages that the population is fleeing from. They hide at night, leave the villages, go there, pose as terrorists and burn houses to rob. Now there is this phenomenon.

In Miteco, one of the villages, the ones who went to burn are people who came out of the villages in Nanjua, from the villages in Ancuabe (about 100 km west of Pemba). They went there to burn and stole goats there. Denounce to the authorities those people who have bad intentions and those that we don't know where they come from. The important thing now is vigilance, vigilance, vigilance," recommended the official quoted by RFI.

While also urging the local youth not to join the groups that have been terrorizing Cabo Delgado province since 2017, with a death toll of 4,000 according to the conflict analysis project ACLED and about 800,000 internally displaced persons according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), Bernardino Rafael asked the population of Montepuez to collaborate with the authorities to neutralize the criminal groups.

This meeting took place at a time when the efforts of Mozambican, regional, and Rwandan troops in the fight against insurgents in the northern part of the country continue.

On Tuesday, the Southern African Development Community (SADC) welcomed the "great progress" of the military mission supporting Mozambique in fighting terrorist groups active in Cabo Delgado.

Also today, Mozambique's Defense and Security Forces said they had stopped a rebel incursion this Sunday in the village of Iba, almost 50 kilometers from the district headquarters of Meluco.

Last week, President Filipe Nyusi announced that government forces, with support from Rwanda and SADC, shot down an insurgent leader during an offensive that culminated in an assault on a "strategic" insurgent base located in the Macomia district of Cabo Delgado.

Since July 2021, an offensive by government troops with Rwandan support, later joined by SADC contingents, has allowed the recovery of some areas in the extreme north of Cabo Delgado that were under the total control of insurgent groups.

However, this situation caused the violence to move elsewhere. After fleeing to other parts of the province, the rebels ended up provoking new attacks in districts that were hitherto considered safe havens.