Ten people, some of them children, were beheaded in a village in northern Mozambique, in a weekend attack blamed on suspected Islamists, local sources said on Tuesday.

The pre-dawn attack on Sunday occurred in Monjane, a village close to the border with Tanzania and not far from Palma, a small town gearing up to be the country’s new natural gas hub in the northern province of Cabo Delgado.

“We were informed about this tragedy,” Palma’s administrator David Machimbuko said, whose account was also confirmed by a local resident, who blamed Islamists.

Mozambique’s state broadcaster also reported on “10 persons decapitated” in the Palma area.

Police were expected to give a news conference later on Tuesday.

Cabo Delgado has seen a number of attacks by suspected radical Islamists since October.

One of the victims of the latest attack was the leader of Monjane village, a local resident said, without giving his name for fear of reprisals.

Source: AFP