Helicopter gunships have exchanged fire with Islamist insurgents as fighting raged for a second day around a strategic town in northern Mozambique. The town of Palma was attacked earlier this week in a three-pronged assault by rebel fighters which was launched just hours after Total, the France-based oil and gas company, announced that it would resume work on its multibillion-dollar liquified natural gas project nearby. Palma had been largely cut off from the rest of Cabo Delgado province for several weeks as the rebels had made road access unsafe, leaving the airport and the seaport as the only routes in and out of the town. About 100 rebels were involved in the assault, which left bodies lying in the street – some of them reportedly beheaded. Since 2017 Mozambique’s northernmost province has been home to a festering insurgency linked to Islamic State (Isis), and that has escalated dramatically in the past year. While beheadings have always been a hallmark of the attacks, in 2020 the insurgents began regularly engaging the military to capture and hold key towns. Mozambique’s defence and security forces are “working tirelessly to re-establish security and order as fast as possible”, and will “do everything to guarantee the security” of the local population and of the nearby “economic projects”, said Ministry of National Defence spokesperson Col Omar Saranga. The Islamic extremist rebels already hold the port town of Mocímboa da Praia, which they captured in August. Since then, the insurgents have seized nearby villages. They have beheaded scores of people, causing more than 670,000 people to flee their homes and creating a humanitarian crisis in northern Mozambique. In their assault on Palma, the extremists attacked the airport and two other locations, Saranga said. Residents fled in all directions, but mostly toward Palma’s beaches, according to sources who spoke to local news media including Zitamar News and Pinnacle News. There were about 100 attackers, reported Pinnacle, citing its network of local sources. On the ground, the attackers went into the centre of Palma, robbing banks and at least one hotel. Shortly before the attack, Total had issued a statement saying it would gradually reopen its operations on the Afungi peninsula near Palma. It said the government of Mozambique had declared the 4 km (2.5-mile) radius surrounding the gas project a special security area. Palma town is just 2 km from the edge of the area. Total had suspended its operations and hundreds of staff and contractors were evacuated from the site in January after the insurgent attacks got close. Before the attack, food supplies had recently arrived in Palma by sea, through commercial operations and in aid from the World Food Programme.