Survivors and relatives of victims of an insurgent attack in 2021, in Palma, Cabo Delgado province, in northern Mozambique, have filed a complaint against TotalEnergies for negligence and indirect homicide, alleging that the French oil company failed to ensure the safety of subcontractors.

Quoted by AFP, the plaintiffs' lawyer Henri Thulliez explains that Total is accused of "negligence in assessing the risks, in contradiction to Patrick Pouyanné's public statements at the time that safety was Total's priority".

The plaintiffs, three survivors and four heirs of two victims, are of South African and British nationality. However, TotalEnergies denies any responsibility and claims to have done everything in its power to save its staff on site.

The Palma attack, claimed by the extremist group Islamic State (IS), began on March 24, 2021 and lasted several days, with an unknown number of victims among the local population and TotalEnergies' subcontractors.

At the time, the French oil company was carrying out the Mozambique LNG megaproject, to exploit a huge natural gas deposit, and was based on the Afungi peninsula, about ten kilometers from the center of Palma.

However, the attack led to the suspension of the project, which represented a total investment of 20 billion dollars. However, the group's chairman, Patrick Pouyanné, recently announced that he hoped to relaunch the project before the end of the year.

"We thought we were safe," repeats Nicholas Alexander, a 53-year-old South African survivor.

Attacks by Islamic fundamentalists have been terrorizing this northern region of Cabo Delgado province since 2017, "but they were happening 70-80 kilometers away, and as Total had established a 25-kilometre perimeter around its workplace, we felt reassured," continued Nicholas Alexander, quoted by Lusa.

The subcontractors were staying in the city of Palma.

In 2019, one of TotalEnergies' competitors, Exxonmobil, gave up investing in the project and repatriated its staff.

Since July 2021, thousands of soldiers from Rwanda and the Southern African Development Community (SADC) have been deployed to support the Mozambican army and have helped regain control of a large part of Cabo Delgado province.

This is the second criminal complaint against the French oil giant in the space of a few days.

On October 2, four environmental groups filed a complaint against the group and its EACOP oil project in Tanzania and Uganda for "climate change".

The group is accused of unintentional bodily harm, destruction, degradation or deterioration of property belonging to third parties that could create a danger to people and manslaughter.