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Catering manager and father of toddler found killed in Mozambique

Security officials stand guard over people waiting for friends and relatives as a ship carrying more than 1,000 people fleeing Palma docks in Pemba, Mozambique. File image.
Security officials stand guard over people waiting for friends and relatives as a ship carrying more than 1,000 people fleeing Palma docks in Pemba, Mozambique. File image.
Image: REUTERS/Emidio Jozine

A Zimbabwean man who had been missing since March 24 when Islamist insurgents launched an attack in northern Mozambique has been found dead.

Nyasha Mugwagwa, 38, worked for hotel and catering company Remote Site Solutions which was contracted at the multibillion-dollar gas projects being built by France’s Total in Palma.

Mugwagwa was last seen at Wentworth Camp, which was home to many gas project workers before the attacks.

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In a statement after weeks of searching, his family said Mugwagwa was killed four days after he went missing.

“This [killing] occurred on March 28 in Palma, Mozambique, during an attack on the town by insurgents,” the family said.

The family said they were in the process of recovering his body so they can give him a decent burial.

Mugwagwa moved to Mozambique in 2016, where he married a Mozambican woman from Beira with whom he has a one-year-old daughter.

A local outfit known as al-Shabaab, but with no traceable links to the armed militant group in Somalia, started terrorising northern Mozambique in late 2017. Hundreds have been killed, communities have been displaced and towns have been captured.

In an Extraordinary Double Troika Summit, the Southern African Development Community (SADC) last week resolved to immediately send a fact-finding team to Mozambique. The bloc will decide what action to take after it convenes another summit on April 29.

TimesLIVE

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