Dozens of foreign workers, including Britons, are missing after scores were killed in a ferocious insurgent attack on a town in Northern Mozambique.
Extremist Islamist group Al-Shabaab were behind a deadly assault on the town of Palma which began on Wednesday.
The jihadist militia are linked to the Islamic state who also claim they were to blame for the military onslaught.
It happened hours after the French energy company Total announced work would resume on its large natural gas project at nearby Afungi, near the border with Tanzania in East Africa.
Attacks on the site in January prompted the firm to suspend work to extract gas from offshore.
Eyewitnesses say the streets were littered with bodies after rebels went on the rampage shooting indiscriminately.
The charity Human Rights Watch say some had been beheaded. Others had escaped into the dense tropical forest but scores of foreign workers were trapped in hotels.
Two hundred Mozambicans and foreign contractors from Britain, South Africa and France sheltered in The Hotel Amarula which became the focus of the rebel assault.
Many, including the contractors, managed to flee the hotel in a convoy of seventeen vehicles in an evacuation operation on Friday.