ISLAMIC terrorists say they have taken control of Mozambique’s strategic northern town of Palma including its banks, government offices, factories and army barracks, and that more than 55 people, including Mozambican army troops, Christians and foreigners were killed following an attack that started on Wednesday last week.

Beheaded bodies were strewn in the streets, with heavily armed rebels battling army, police and a private military outfit in several locations.

Thousands were estimated to be missing from the town, which held about 70,000 people before the attack began.

Lionel Dyck, a retired Zimbabwean army colonel and director of the Dyck Advisory Group, a private military company contracted by the Mozambican police to help fight the rebels, has been involved in evacuation efforts of foreigners and other victims of the attacks from Palma.

From several interviews he has given to the media including the Associated Press and the SABC that we have pieced together, Dyck paints a grave picture – and a military which appears keener to secure foreign investments – including a multi-billion-dollar investment by Total, the France-based oil and gas company, to extract liquified natural gas from offshore sites in the Indian Ocean – than the besieged population:

THE government has got quite a large military force which I’m assuming is staying here to guard the oil company. They aren’t in Palma, where these atrocities took place, they stayed in the camp.

A few days later they are trying to come out, they want to sweep through the town house-to-house. It’s going to be a mess of a house-clearing exercise and there will be a lot of dead bodies. The most difficult warfare there is house-clearing, and these terrorists are in the houses and there are a lot of them.

There’s no attempt that I see by the Mozambican government to look after people in the town. There are numerous dead bodies lying on the streets, some decapitated. There have been lots of beheadings. Right up on day one, our guys saw the drivers of trucks bringing rations to Palma. Their bodies were by the trucks. Their heads were off. We’re currently not counting bodies but focusing on the living.

There is fighting in the streets, in pockets across the town. My guys are airborne and they’ve engaged several little groups and they’ve engaged one quite large group. They landed into the fight to recover a couple of wounded policemen… We have also rescued many people who were trapped, 220 people at last count.

This attack is not a surprise. We’ve been expecting Palma to be whacked the moment the rains stopped and the fighting season started, which is now. They have been preparing for this. They’ve had enough time to get their ducks in a row. They have a notch up in their ability. They’re more aggressive. They’re using their mortars.

This insurrection has grown from quite a small well-armed group of bandits to what we see now. This was a well-planned planned attack by three groups into the town. In the rainy season they have grown, but in the past they were just bandits really, hooking onto Isis and claiming affiliation to Isis and hoisting up the black flag.

Now, I think it’s quite serious in that they have become more of a threat, and they have been very effective. This was a very well-planned operation and they are very well armed, which surprised us. They have come in they have mortars, heavy guns like AK-47 automatic rifles, RPD and PKM machine guns. We had some heavy rounds going through our helicopters, so things have changed. It has changed from mere bandits in the bush to a serious threat now.

What we really need is a helicopter that can lift up a lot of people. My helicopters are fighting helicopters, they’re gunships, they can take two or three people. We have some search and rescue helicopters where we can squeeze four in. We actually need some Mil Mi-8 type of helicopters or even one where we can go in and land and pick up a lot of people.

When that helicopter lands on the ground, it’s quite safe because my gunships will be overhead, anything on the ground that happens in daylight we can secure. The dissidents will not affect any operation on the ground because we can deal with them from the air, we do this very effectively. But what I need now, what I would like to see is some big helicopters coming here, finding where people are hiding and taking them out in big numbers and not twos and threes.

As for the Mozambican military strategy right now, they must get sufficient troops to sweep through the town, going house-to-house and clean each one out. That’s the most difficult phase of warfare in the book. It will be very difficult unless there’s a competent force put in place with good command and control to retake that town. It can be done. But it ain’t going to be easy.