Three survivors and four relatives of the victims of a terrorist attack in Mozambique have sued the French multinational oil company TotalEnergies.
The survivors and relatives, who are British and South African, are accusing Total of involuntary manslaughter and negligence for failing to protect its subcontractors.
Dozens of people including TotalEnergies subcontractors were killed in March 2021 when Islamist militants attacked Mozambique’s port city of Palma.
The attack occurred near the site of a gas project partly owned by TotalEnergies.
Mozambique’s government claimed that 30 people died in the attack but Alex Perry, an independent journalist who investigated the attack said 1,402 people died or went missing, including 55 Total workers.
The lawsuit claims that TotalEnergies failed to warn subcontractors working on the site about the risk of possible attacks.
The suit further accuses TotalEnergies of lacking proper safety or evacuation measures and refusing to fuel a helicopter that would have evacuated its personnel.
The complainants say the militants killed some TotalEnergies subcontractors while they fled their hotel.
“It is not alleged that TotalEnergies directly caused the deaths of victims but that the company did not act in accordance with the expected diligence standards of a professional in its responsibilities,” a statement by their lawyers said.
TotalEnergies has dismissed the allegations of the survivors and victims’ families as “inaccurate”, adding that it evacuated all its personnel on the site, the Reuters news agency reports.
The BBC News
