Palma and the Afungi Peninsula, the Gas Town That Was Overrun in 2021 and Now Hosts the LNG Restart

Palma sits at the far northern tip of Mozambique, a few kilometres from the Rovuma River and the Tanzanian border. Most of the money in Cabo Delgado is going there. About 10 kilometres south of the town, on the Afungi peninsula, TotalEnergies is building Mozambique LNG, the 20-billion-dollar onshore plant it restarted in January 2026 after a five-year freeze (the restart). If ExxonMobil goes ahead with Rovuma LNG, its plant will be built next to it (the gas projects).

Five years ago Palma was the scene of the worst single attack of the war.

Image: pxef.com

March 2021

On 24 March 2021 insurgents of the Islamic State's local branch attacked Palma from several sides. They held the town for days. Workers, residents and foreign contractors hid in the Amarula hotel and tried to break out in a convoy that was ambushed. The journalist Alex Perry, who has investigated the attack for years, says 1,563 civilians were killed or kidnapped. Tens of thousands fled, on foot towards Tanzania and Nangade, by boat to Pemba, or to the gates of the gas site.

TotalEnergies had already evacuated most of its staff in January after attacks near the project. After Palma it declared force majeure and left. The project stood still until 2025, and the pause cost the partners about 4.5 billion dollars, according to estimates reported by Mongabay.

The containers

What happened after the attack is now the subject of a criminal complaint. In 2024 Perry reported for Politico that Mozambican soldiers guarding the Afungi site in mid-2021 had detained men fleeing Palma in shipping containers at the project's entrance, tortured them and killed dozens. He identified 97 victims and believes the true number may be double that.

In November 2025 the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights filed a complaint with French prosecutors accusing TotalEnergies of complicity in war crimes, torture and enforced disappearance. The company denies the allegations and has always said it is not responsible for the conduct of the government forces guarding the site. No court has ruled on it.

The enclave

The site came back under a different security model. Rwanda sent troops in July 2021, and about 5,000 Rwandan soldiers remain in the north, most of them around the gas project, according to Al Jazeera. Mozambican troops and police, working under an agreement with the project, guard the Afungi site itself.

Critics call it an enclave. Daniel Ribeiro of the Mozambican group Justiça Ambiental argues that concentrating protection at Afungi leaves the villages around it more exposed. The insurgents have not tried a large attack on the site since 2021, but in late 2025 their activity spread back into the northern districts, and conflict monitors linked that to Palma's growing importance ahead of the restart (the insurgency explained).

The people moved

Building the plant meant moving people off the peninsula. Several fishing villages were resettled about 10 kilometres inland, in Quitunda, a planned village next to the project, far from the sea they lived from. Communities and NGOs say the compensation and new farm plots have not made up for lost access to the sea, and some land compensation is still unresolved. During the war Quitunda also filled with people who had fled Palma.

TotalEnergies says it has supported thousands of jobs and local farmers and fishermen through its foundation for the province, and that it is steering contracts to Mozambican companies (local suppliers).

Palma in 2026

Palma town has been rebuilt in part. The provincial government says 90 percent of the district's residents now have electricity and 68 percent safe drinking water. Work on the plant brings in contractors and money. It is still a frontier town: reached from Pemba by a long road through Macomia and Mocímboa da Praia (Mocímboa in 2026), or by air to the project's airstrip, and the British government advises against travel there except to the Afungi site and Palma town itself (is Pemba safe).

Whether Palma becomes a gas town or stays a garrison town will decide a lot about how this war ends.