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Fighting around the strategic Mozambique town of Palma entered a second day on Thursday as ISIL-linked fighters occupied and ransacked it despite French energy giant Total claiming it was secure.
Mozambique’s government said the town – in its northernmost province of Cabo Delgado and about 10km (6.2 miles) from gas developments worth $60bn – came under a three-pronged attack on Wednesday and security forces moved in to establish order.
At least 11 people have been killed in three separate jihadist attacks in the western Tillaberi region that is close to Mali, local officials said.
The militants arrived in the villages on motorbikes on Wednesday and set classrooms on fire, looted a health centre and stole livestock.
Leader of the ISIS terrorist organization in the Sinai Peninsula, Salim Salma Said Mahmoud al-Hamadin, was killed during clashes with Bedouin and Egyptian forces near Al-Barth, south of Rafah and near the border with Israel, according to Arabic media. A bodyguard and escort were also detained.
Hamadin, referred to as the “most dangerous and oldest of the takfiri elements in the Sinai,” was responsible for the murder of hundreds of civilians and Egyptian soldiers, according to the reports. “Takfiri” is a word often used to refer to armed extremist groups, but originally referred to Muslim apostates or infidels.
At least 31 soldiers were killed in an attack in northern Mali this week, an army officer said Wednesday, in one of the deadliest assaults on the military this year.
Dozens of assailants on motorbikes and pickup trucks on Monday stormed a military post southwest of the town of Ansongo, near the borders with Burkina Faso and Niger, the army said on social media.
Attackers killed at least a dozen villagers in an overnight raid on a village in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, a witness and two civil rights groups said on Monday.
They blamed the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), a Ugandan militia active in eastern Congo since the 1990s, which has committed dozens of brutal reprisal attacks on civilians since the army began operations against it in late 2019.
