Over 50 people were beheaded and chopped into pieces by radical Muslim militants in the east African country of Mozambique last weekend:
BBC – More than 50 people have been beheaded in northern Mozambique by militant Islamists, state media report.
The militants turned a football pitch in a village into an “execution ground”, where they decapitated and chopped bodies, other reports said.
Several people were also beheaded in another village, state media reported.
The beheadings are the latest in a series of gruesome attacks that the militants have carried out in gas-rich Cabo Delgado province since 2017.
The militants are linked to the Islamic State (IS) group, giving it a foothold in southern Africa.
There were two separate attacks, the first on a village where two were beheaded and several women kidnapped:
The gunmen chanted “Allahu Akbar” (“God is greatest”, in English), fired shots, and set homes alight when they raided Nanjaba village on Friday night, the state-owned Mozambique News Agency quoted survivors as saying.
Two people were beheaded in the village and several women abducted, the news agency added.
The worst happened in a separate village:
A separate group of militants carried out another brutal attack on Muatide village, where they beheaded more than 50 people, the news agency reported.
Villagers who tried to flee were caught, and taken to the local football pitch where they were beheaded and chopped to pieces in an atrocity carried out from Friday night to Sunday, privately-run Pinnancle News reported.
The BBC reports that this is all part of an effort to force Islamic rule in the northern part of the country, saying “The group has exploited poverty and unemployment to recruit youth in their fight to establish Islamic rule in the area.”
The only way to fight groups like this is to find then and kill them, and that will probably take a small army.