UN raises alert for 780,000 people displaced in Mozambique

The organisation said its humanitarian plan in the southern African country was facing a funding gap (Marc Hoogsteyns/AP)

The United Nations’ refugee chief has raised a new alert over 780,000 displaced people in Mozambique, the vast majority of them because of a seven-year insurgency by a jihadi group that has thrown the north of the country into turmoil.

Filippo Grandi, the UN’s high commissioner for refugees, was on a visit to Mozambique’s northern Cabo Delgado province, where a so-called Islamic State-affiliated (IS) group has waged attacks on communities since 2017 and where some 1.3 million people were forced to flee their homes to escape killings and beheadings.