The Battle of Palma
The Documentary Podcast
BBC
4.3 • 2.7K Ratings
🗓️ 29 April 2021
⏱️ 26 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
At the end of March, hundreds of militants linked to the Islamic State group overran a small, but strategic coastal town in northern Mozambique. The bloody surprise attack on Palma marked a significant escalation in a shadowy conflict that began in 2017 and has already driven hundreds of thousands of Mozambicans from their homes. Some of the heaviest fighting in Palma centred on a hotel where many foreign workers spent days under siege, before attempting a daring escape. Helicopters and boats were also used to try to rescue those trapped by the militants. For Assignment, Andrew Harding tells the story of Palma’s days of terror.
Produced by Becky Lipscombe
(Image: Mozambican soldiers on a motorbike in the streets of Palma, April 2021. Credit: European Pressphoto Agency/Joao Relvas)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | It begins in the early afternoon of Wednesday the 24th of March. |
| 0:09.0 | The gunfire started going off and mortars, thousands and thousands of rounds just continuously. |
| 0:18.0 | Palmer, a small town in northern Mozambique, has been half expecting this moment for months. |
| 0:24.0 | After the wet season comes the fighting season for these people and we reckon that within two or three weeks of the fighting season starting they would attack Parliament. |
| 0:34.0 | Hundreds of Islamist fighters begin moving through town, |
| 0:37.0 | a coordinated attack that sends thousands of civilians running for their lives. I saw dead bodies, I saw injured people. |
| 0:50.0 | The Islamist fighters are known locally as al-Shabaab, a shadowy group with links to Islamic State. |
| 0:57.0 | They come and shoot and scoot and create chaos. They kill and murder. |
| 1:01.0 | You don't know where they are, they live live amongst the people they can come and go like |
| 1:03.4 | ghosts. |
| 1:08.4 | Over the last few years those ghosts have seized control of a vast chunk of northern Mozambique, |
| 1:15.0 | a remote impoverished coastal region close to the border with Tanzania. |
| 1:20.0 | They want to impose Sharia law and accuse the government of corruption and neglect. |
| 1:27.0 | Now Al-Shabaab are launching their boldest offensive yet. This is assignment on the BBC World Service. |
| 1:37.2 | I'm Andrew Harding with the Battle of Puy. A friend of mine called me and said, |
| 1:45.0 | A friend of mine called me and said, I'm seeing the population people leaving their own houses |
| 1:54.8 | and going somewhere. Do you know what's going on? Is there anything happening on your |
| 2:00.6 | side? Before the gunfire there's a brief period of uncertainty in Palmer. |
| 2:06.0 | Rumors spreading of strangers with weapons. |
| 2:10.0 | Then, chaos. Wes Linnellneel is a 37 year old South African. He and his relatives came to work on a |
| 2:26.7 | construction project here in Palmer, a project linked to the discovery of giant offshore |
| 2:32.0 | gas fields that were supposed to turn this into a boomtown. |
... |
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