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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.
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ISIS operatives raided Christian villages and burned homes in Mozambique. (Middle East Media Research Institute)
“That jihadist groups are in a position to take over not one, not two, but several countries in Africa – take over the whole country or most of several countries – is dangerous,” Fernandez, a former U.S. diplomat, said. “It’s very dangerous for the national security of the United States let alone the security of the poor people who are there – Christians or Muslims or whoever they are.”
The Islamic State Central Africa Province (ISCAP) also recently released several photos of their own documenting a July 27 attack against the Christian village of Komanda in the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s Ituri province. Islamic State-affiliated soldiers opened fire at a Catholic Church and set fire to homes, stores, vehicles and possessions. At least 45 people were killed, according to MEMRI. The photos show burning facilities and the corpses of Christians.
Fernandez explained to Fox News Digital that the goal of these jihadist groups is “eliminating Christian communities,” as they push down from safe havens and Muslims are “given a choice: ‘either join us or you too will face killing and annihilation.’”
“Christians, of course, are not going to be asked to join,” Fernandez told Fox News Digital. “Christians are going to be targeted and destroyed.”
The United Nations migration agency said Monday that attacks by insurgents in Mozambique’s northern Cabo Delgado province displaced more than 46,000 people in the span of eight days last month.
The International Organization for Migration said nearly 60% of those forced from their homes were children.
ISIS fighters set fire to Christian villages in Mozambique. (Middle East Media Research Institute)
In a separate report, the U.N.’s humanitarian office said the wave of attacks between July 20 and July 28 across three districts in Cabo Delgado caused the surge in displacements.
While the United Nations references attacks, its reporting has not detailed deaths or specified the targets. At least nine Christians in the Cabo Delgado province were reportedly killed in separate attacks by Islamic insurgents during that timeframe.
“I’m no fan of the United Nations in general, but I think what they’re doing is kind of the lowest common denominator,” Fernandez told Fox News Digital. “It’s kind of easy to be vague like that. The fact that some of this and some of the worst of it is happening because of a deep anti-Christian animus, hatred of Christians, religiously-based hatred of Christians is something that the UN usually doesn’t like to talk about.”
Fighters from Islamic State Mozambique allegedly captured and beheaded six Christians in the village of Natocua in the Ancuabe district of Mozambique’s Cabo Delgado Province on July 22, according to MEMRI.
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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.
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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.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.