International observers are reporting that ISIS-aligned soldiers are beheading Christians and burning churches and homes in central and southern Africa – with some of the most brutal attacks happening in the nation of Mozambique.
The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) – a counter-terrorism research nonprofit based in Washington, D.C. – is sounding that alarm about what it describes as a “silent genocide” taking place against Christians.
The Islamic State Mozambique Province (ISMP) recently released 20 photos boasting of four attacks on “Christian villages” in the Chiure district, in Mozambique’s northern Cabo Delgado province, according to MEMRI.
MEMRI said the photos show ISIS operatives raiding villages and burning a church and homes. The images also allegedlydepict the beheadings of a member of what the jihadists consider “infidel militias” and two Christian civilians. Rampaging jihadist groups celebrated the killings. Photos also showed the corpses of several members of those so-called “infidel militias,” according to the institute’s analysis.
“What we see in Africa today is a kind of silent genocide or silent, brutal, savage war that is occurring in the shadows and all too often ignored by the international community,” MEMRI Vice President Alberto Miguel Fernandez told Fox News Digital.
Barnabas Aid, an international Christian charity, pointed to reporting by the Terrorism Research & Analysis Consortium claiming another three Christians were slaughtered in the Chiure district in attacks on July 24 and 25.
The southern African nation has been fighting an insurgency by Islamic State-affiliated militants in the north for at least eight years. Rwandan soldiers have been deployed to help Mozambique fight them.
Structures burned in Mozambique ISIS attacks. (Middle East Media Research Institute)
The jihadist groups have been accused of beheading villagers and kidnapping children to be used as laborers or child soldiers. The U.N. estimates that the violence, and the impact of drought and several cyclones in recent years, has led to the displacement of more than 1 million people in northern Mozambique.
Fernandez said that he feels the Trump administration “has refreshingly been tough and strong when it comes to jihadist terrorism” – but what’s happening in Africa typically does not receive as much attention compared to the Middle East. He pointed to how Trump’s intervention in the U.S. brokering a ceasefire deal between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo helps offset jihadist groups that take advantage of security vacuums and ungoverned spaces to expand control.
Fernandez also warned about the threat of jihadist ideology. After the Islamic State was “very strongly defeated” in the Middle East during Trump’s first administration, he said branches are now looking to weaker territories to expand their influence.
“It’s kind of like a whack-a-mole situation,” Fernandez said, explaining that the Islamic State not long ago controlled a pseudo-state the size of the United Kingdom between Syria and Iraq. “What we need to see is them to be utterly defeated in Africa, so people will say, people on the sidelines or people on defense will say, ‘Well obviously these people did not have the mandate of Allah, the mandate God, they were losers, they lost.’ That’s what we need.”
Doctors Without Borders said it has launched an emergency response to help thousands of recently displaced people who now live in camps in Chiure district.
Vehicles set on fire by ISIS soldiers in Africa. (Middle East Media Research Institute)
Cabo Delgado has large offshore natural gas reserves, and the insurgency caused the suspension of a $20 billion extraction project by French company TotalEnergies in 2021.
Meanwhile, the Congolese army said last month that attacks in the village of Komanda in the conflict-battered region were carried out by the Allied Democratic Force, which is backed by the Islamic State. The group has mostly targeted villagers in eastern Congo and across the border in Uganda. ADF leaders pledged allegiance in 2019 to the Islamic State and have sought to establish an Islamic caliphate in Uganda.
