MAPUTO, Mozambique, Oct 7, (AP): Mozambicans will vote this week for a new president who many hope will bring peace to an oil- and gas-rich northern province that has been ravaged by a jihadist insurgency for nearly seven years. Close to 17 million voters will vote for the next president, alongside 250 members of parliament and provincial assemblies, on Wednesday.

The current president, Filipe Nyusi, is ineligible to stand again after two terms of office. During the six week campaign period, which ended Sunday, the frontrunners promised that violence in the north of the country will be their main priority, although none has laid out a plan to end it. Mozambique has been fighting an Islamic State-affiliated group that has launched attacks on communities in the province of Cabo Delgado since 2017, including beheadings and other killings.

Some 1.3 million people were forced to flee their homes. Around 600,000 people have since returned home, many to shattered communities where houses, markets, churches, schools and health facilities have been destroyed, the United Nations refugee agency said earlier this year. The candidates rounded off their campaigns on Sunday in the northern and central provinces, which are regarded as the highest-voting constituencies.

They promised to address development issues exacerbated by the insurgency. Daniel Chapo, the presidential candidate of Nyusi's ruling Front for the Liberation of Mozambique (Frelimo), has been telling rallies that peace will allow Cabo Delgado to rebuild infrastructure. "The first objective of governance is to work to end terrorism using all available means to return peace.

Peace is the condition for development,” said Chapo at a rally last week in Pemba, the provincial capital of Cabo Delgado. Frelimo, which has ruled the country since independence in 1975, is widely expected to win again. Lutero Simango, the candidate of the Democratic Movement of Mozambique, spent most of his time campaigning in the central and northern regions, and made promises to remedy a lack of medicines in public hospitals, high unemployment and abject poverty.