Jihadists in Africa continue to terrorize the innocent and peaceful, with children as young as 11 being beheaded by ISIS-linked militants who have taken more than 2,500 lives over the last three years in Mozambique alone.
One boy of 12 had his head cut off close to where his mother was hiding with her three other children during a raid on their village, Save the Children revealed in a report at DailyMail.com. Another mom had to leave her slain 11-year-old son in their village without a burial as her family fled for their lives.
A group that calls itself Islamic State Central Africa Province has been waging a bloody campaign since 2017 in Mozambique’s gas-rich Cabo Delgado province. More than half a million people have had to flee the violence.
Around half of the 2,614 people killed in the conflict were civilians.
Amnesty International earlier this month warned that atrocities are being committed on all sides of the conflict. Government soldiers have been accused of raping and otherwise abusing women near their bases and summarily executing suspected Islamist terrorists.
Jihadists were accused of dozens of beheadings and the desecration of corpses with machetes.
The mother who lost her 12-year-old son told Save the Children: “That night our village was attacked, and houses were burned. When it all started, I was at home with my four children. We tried to escape to the woods, but they took my eldest son and beheaded him. We couldn’t do anything because we would be killed too.”
The 29-year-old woman who lost her 11-year-old said: “After my son was killed, we understood that it was no longer safe to stay in my village. We fled to my father’s house in another village, but a few days later the attacks started there too.”
