NORTHERN MOZAMBIQUE PALMA ATTACK, ‘I HAD TO PAY A BRIBE TO LEAVE’.

Reports say people desperate to flee a town in Northern Mozambique following a jihadist attack have had to pay bribes to leave after security forces set up roadblocks, trapping thousands.

There are growing fears of a humanitarian emergency in the area where aid agencies have not been given access.

Checkpoints surround the village of Quitunda near Palina, where more than twenty thousand people sheltered in the days after the strategic town was overrun by jihadist militants.

Al-Shabab a home grown militant group started its insurgency in Mozambique’s resource-rich Cabo Delgado region in 2017.

Two years later it pledged allegiance to the Islamic State, IS group although it is not clear how close the links between the two organization area.