Five Migration Services employees were arrested, suspected of facilitating the entry of foreigners seeking to recruit members for the drug trafficking that finances terrorists in Mozambique, Mozambican police announced today.

The officials were arrested as a result of an arrest warrant issued by the Judicial Court of Sofala Province, as part of ongoing proceedings after the arrest on Tuesday of five foreigners seeking to recruit members for the drug trafficking that finances terrorists, the spokesman for the National Criminal Investigation Service (Sernic) in Sofala, Alfeu Sitoe, explained to the media in Beira.

"There are strong indications of his involvement in the case of the foreigners arrested on Tuesday," the Sernic spokesman stressed, without giving further details.

On Tuesday, police arrested four men and a woman, all foreigners, at a residence in the city of Beira on suspicion of recruiting members for drug trafficking, which finances terrorists in the country.

Passports and other identity documents from Kenya and Somalia were seized in the operation, but they appeared to be forgeries, according to Sernic.

The action was filed based on information that the group of citizens of foreign nationality was engaged in the commission of various crimes, such as drug trafficking, illegal immigration and human trafficking.

According to the Sernic spokesman, one of the members "has been recruiting citizens of Kenyan nationality to integrate them into the insurgency in the northern province of Cabo Delgado," more than a thousand kilometers away.

Cabo Delgado province is rich in natural gas, but terrorized since 2017 by armed rebels, with some attacks claimed by the extremist group Islamic State.

There are 784,000 internally displaced people due to the conflict, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), and about 4,000 deaths, according to the ACLED conflict registration project.

Since July 2021, an offensive by government troops with Rwandan support, later joined by the Southern African Development Community (SADC), has allowed the rebels to recover areas where they had been present, but their flight has provoked new attacks in other districts used as passage or temporary refuge. (Lusa)