In recent months, resource-rich northern Mozambique has become the epicenter of social and economic tensions, with devastating consequences for the population. In February, at least 200,000 people were forced to flee conflict in Cabo Delgado, Mozambique’s northernmost province. Since then, numerous attacks by armed groups on villages across the region have uprooted thousands more from their homes.
During an insurgent attack on May 28, 2020, four Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) staff members were working at the health center in the town of Macomia just before it was ransacked and burned. All roads were blocked in and out of the town as insurgents entered the village. The only way to escape the violence was to flee into the bush.
That day, twenty-seven MSF staff living in Macomia fled with the rest of the town’s population, dodging stray bullets as the combat intensified around them. No MSF personnel were killed during this incident, but the trauma they lived is very real.
