French President Emmanuel Macron has condemned the beheading of more than 50 people in northern Mozambique’s Cabo Delgado province by attackers linked to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

“More than 50 people have been beheaded, women kidnapped, villages looted and then set on fire,” he tweeted Wednesday. “Barbarians hijack a religion of peace to sow terror: Islamist terrorism is an international threat that calls for an international response.”

The militants attacked several villages in the districts of Miudumbe and Macomia killing civilians, abducting women and children and burning down homes.

Bernardino Rafael, the commander-general of Mozambique’s police, said during a media briefing this week that “the houses then went after the population who had fled to the woods and started with their macabre actions”. 

Witnesses told local media that the militants turned a soccer pitch in a village into an “execution ground” where they decapitated and dismembered bodies.

Read more at CBS News