Disir
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Islamic State-linked militants leading an insurgency in northern Mozambique have kidnapped hundreds of boys and forced them to join their ranks as child soldiers, Human Rights Watch said Wednesday.
A jihadist group known locally as Al-Shabab has been terrorising Mozambique's gas-rich Cabo Delgado region since 2017, raiding villages and towns in a bid to establish a caliphate.
Local sources told Human Rights Watch (HRW) armed militants have been abducting hundreds of teenagers, some as young as 12, and taking them to training camps.
"We joined many other men and boys and were trained on how to use guns and knives to fight," said a young man who was captured in 2020 and taken to a camp in the town of Mbau, around 150 kilometres north of the provincial capital Pemba.
It never ends.
A jihadist group known locally as Al-Shabab has been terrorising Mozambique's gas-rich Cabo Delgado region since 2017, raiding villages and towns in a bid to establish a caliphate.
Local sources told Human Rights Watch (HRW) armed militants have been abducting hundreds of teenagers, some as young as 12, and taking them to training camps.
"We joined many other men and boys and were trained on how to use guns and knives to fight," said a young man who was captured in 2020 and taken to a camp in the town of Mbau, around 150 kilometres north of the provincial capital Pemba.
HRW: Mozambique insurgents train child soldiers
Mozambique's insurgency has killed more than 3,300 people -- half of them civilians -- and displaced at least 800,000 from their homes over the past four years
www.dhakatribune.com
It never ends.