People are fleeing a surge of attacks in northern Mozambique where witnesses have described beheadings, mass kidnappings and villages burned to the ground, the United Nations has said.

UN officials said armed groups have stepped up assaults in Cabo Delgado province, where a rebellion by a group that espouses its brand of Islam as an antidote to what it describes as a corrupt ruling elite, has killed hundreds since it started in 2017.

Displaced villagers have described killings, maiming, torture and destroyed crops, said Andrej Mahecic, the spokesman for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

“They speak of men in particular being targeted and beheaded, and many, many reports of women and children … being kidnapped or simply disappearing,” he told a briefing in Geneva on Friday.

While some of the attackers appeared to be bandits, Mahecic added that there is “also the element of some of the groups being driven by ideological or other ideas”.

“And they have been quite vicious … in spreading the terror in this part of Mozambique,” he said.

The UNHCR said there had been a sharp increase in violence in recent months, and the past weeks had been the most turbulent period since attacks began in October 2017.

Source: Al Jazeera