ISIS-linked terrorists decapitate Christian pastor before handing his severed head to his wife

Suspected ISIS-linked extremists have decapitated a Christian pastor before handing his severed head to his wife to show authorities in Mozambique.

The killing, reported by local news, took place in the country’s gas-rich northern province of Cabo Delgado.

Last Wednesday, the man’s widow carried a sack containing the head of her husband to the district police headquarters, according to the BBC who cited military sources.

She was ordered to inform the authorities of her husband’s killing by the suspected Islamic State-linked insurgents, who found the pastor in a field, she told police.

The woman, a resident of Nova Zambezia, told officials that the attackers kidnapped her husband from the farm before beheading him.

Speaking on Thursday, Mozambique’s President Filipe Nyusi Thursday stressed that his country had witnessed fewer jihadist attacks this year than last, after Rwanda and neighbouring countries helped tackle the four-year insurgency.

The Cabo Delgado province has been rocked by attacks by Islamic State-linked militants since 2017, killing at least 3,340 people and displacing more than 800,000.

In one attack earlier this year, dozens of innocent people were killed when Islamist insurgents launched a raid on the northern town of Palma on March 24, including Briton Philip Mawer.

But since July, more than 3,100 African, European and US soldiers have been deployed to the northern province to quell the unrest.

Despite ongoing attacks against villages and civilians on a weekly basis, Nyusi told parliament that these efforts had been partially successful.

‘We were able to reduce terrorist attacks by three times,’ he said.

While in 2020 the country registered just over 160 attacks, that number was reduced to 52 in 2021, he said.

He said it was thanks in part to ‘military cooperation’ with Rwanda and the 16-nation Southern African Development Community of its neighbouring countries.

Nyusi said recent operations had led to the capture of ‘245 suspected terrorists’, and killing of about 200 ‘terrorists’ and 10 ‘terrorist leaders’.

Addressing fears the jihadists were instead spreading to territory adjacent to Cabo Delgado, he said some suspected fighters had also been captured in the province of Niassa.

Nyusi however discouraged the displaced from returning to their villages.

Source: Daily Mail