this is bbc news. the headlines: england's footballers are through to the semi—finals of euro 2020 after a 4—0 victory over ukraine. it's the first time in 25 years that they've got so far in the competition. they'll now play denmark, while italy will take on spain in the other semi—final. officials in the us state of florida are bringing forward plans to demolish the remains of a building that collapsed just over a week ago, killing at least 2a people. it's feared an approaching storm could destabilise what remains of the structure. 121 people are still missing. protests against the brazilian government's handling of the coronavirus crisis have been taking place in cities across the country. tens of thousands of people have been demonstrating to demand a boost to the vaccination programme and the resumption of financial support for the poorest in society.

now on bbc news, our world. a warning, this programme contains scenes which some viewers may find upsetting for months, a threat had been looming over northern mozambique. chuckles. and on the 24th of march, 2021, the threat became real. gunfire. go, go, go, go, go! ijust saw people running and people shooting, mothers dropping their children, people falling. this is the story of the people who became trapped at the centre of mozambique�*s biggest jihadist attack yet. man: allahu abkar. all: allahu abkar!

i'm catherine byaruhanga. i've travelled to hear the extraordinary accounts of those who survived... this was a particular form of brutality that i've never seen anywhere — and i've been in a lot of wars. ..and to find out if these shores are becoming the new frontline and the spread of the islamic state group. in the morning, greg always gave me a morning call. at home in south africa, mum meryl kept in daily contact with her two sons and their dad, who were working in mozambique. i think they all just loved the life in mozambique — beautiful people and beautiful beaches. love you, bro.

love you, my man. that morning, her sons wesley and adrian were at the building site with their dad, greg. we build camps all over africa. we're contractors. we'd been working in mozambique for a long time, so we had a big mozambican workforce. johji was also in parma that day. like many mozambicans, he had come to the town looking for work. located in northern mozambique, parma was booming because of a $20 billion gas project being built by french energy giant total.

works had been suspended amid concerns it could be the target of islamist militants. but that very morning, total announced it was starting up again, after the after the government promised extra security in the area. in the fields nearby, local residents were working their small farms. muanassa was among them, with her large family, including granddaughter ancha.

that morning, greg sent me two pictures of the clouds over parma that day and the clouds over pemba. i thought "that looks a bit ominous". we were all working normally and one of our guys got a phone call that stuff was happening and could not say much but that they are attacking parma. wesley began to film on his phone. gunfire. once it started, itjust didn't stop. go, go, go, go, go! go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go!

19—year—old ancha was heavily pregnant.

ancha and her grandmother escaped to hide in the bush with thousands of others. wesley, his dad and brother were also hunting safety. get in! toot, too! we turned around and we stopped at the amarula hotel. and a whole lot of people just started streaming in. the amarula was known as a local haunt for white foreign workers. with security gates and a helipad, people flocked here in search of safety.

as the attackers swept through town, they targeted key sites like banks, food shops and phone masts. i tried to get hold of all of them on their cellphones, nobody was answering, and i started to panic. eventually at about nine o'clock that night, greg phoned me from a satellite phone and said that we're safe, they're in the amarula, they're going to get evacuated. they were underfire from more than 100 militants, known locally as al—shabaab, who are affiliated with isis. all cheer. an islamist insurgency had been spreading across the impoverished cabo delgado region since 2017. what began with small, scattered hits had grown into bigger, more organised and brutal assaults

affecting many districts. this is the first major attack impacting foreign workers. gunfire. around 200 workers and locals had now sought refuge at the amarula. we were inside the hotel, upstairs at — where the restaurant and the bar is. gunfire. we started getting shot at. they were shooting at us over the wall, so we all were lying on the floor and just keeping our heads down. gunfire. we did not have one military guy there. we had no weapons. it wasjust us, with our hands, sitting there. so now you — what's going through your head? "0k, these people are coming, and what? "am i going to be killed like an animal?

"is my head going to be cut off? "are my arms and body going to be cut in pieces?" as they advanced towards the hotel, the insurgents had been inflicting their trademark act of violence, beheadings. outside, the military were struggling to contain them. 400km away, dag, a controversial private security firm working for the mozambican police, was alerted to the attacks. leading the operation was seasoned former colonel lionel dyck. the initial thing from the sky, there were bodies lying lying next to trucks. they'd decapitated some truck drivers. there were a lot of bodies lying around. 0n the ground, people trapped in by the attackers tried to signal to the helicopters. people came running out, waving something. you can't leave people like that alone. gunfire.

whenever dag had choppers above us, that was a big sense of relief. gunfire. we thought "0k, we are going to get rescued".

and that's when they did the four— and that's when they did the four loads of evacuating people. and the one chopper got shot twice. but even after the chopper being shot, they still came back. dag rescued 20 people from the amarula, but their small helicopters could only take a few passengers at a time. those trapped on the ground believed more help was coming. so we wait, we wait, we wait, we wait. but help never came. and dag, struggling forfuel supplies, say they had to leave. we were just left there. no—one sent help, no—one did nothing — we got two—way radios. we managed to speak to the total security control room in afungi. you know what total security

control room's last words about us was? "i am receiving 80—plus phone calls per day from those guys' families." "i can do nothing. it's time they accept it is what it is. "there is nothing we can do for them." total�*s control room was just 10km away, at the gas project. the government had just agreed to provide a 25km security zone around the site. this should have included palma. but while the town was under siege, the gas project itself was never breached. dag claims that total refused to share fuel, and the military refused to share larger helicopters, hampering their rescue missions. distant gunfire. those inside the amarula had now found a weapon and hatched a plan.

so, we knew that by friday night, we won't survive another night there and they were going to get in. if they got in, we would be slaughtered. we've got the vehicles there. if the choppers aren't going to be able to evacuate us, then we need to try and make a run for it. before nightfall. we took a list of all of the people, their names, and worked out how many vehicles we needed. and we started to load. we put all the women and children in armoured vehicles. and the rest of us were all in unarmoured vehicles. i have a wife and three children. that was my motivation. to get in a car and to try to drive and drive to a place,

that we do not know if the road is open. will we get killed or not? but if we stay here, we will die. my brother had said to us at that stage that he thinks this is a bad idea. "we've got a weapon, maybe we should stay?" and, um, isaid, "let'sjust go." in a forest on the edge of town, ancha and herfamily were also planning an escape. before they left, muanassa went back to check on their home. they, and thousands of others, headed for the shore to flee by boat. with little food or water, the 400—kilometre journey was a huge risk.

ancha went into labour in the middle of the sea.

back at the amarula, the convoy was preparing to leave. low on fuel and losing daylight, dag says they were unable to give the cars air cover. we just went as fast as we could. about two or three kilometres out on that road to tanzania, we got hit by the first ambush. the guy that was driving, they shot his glasses off his head. that's how close the bullet was to killing him. probably about, uh, five kilometres further, we got hit by another ambush.

my brother, he got hit, just was shouting, "i'm hit. i can't drive. somebody else needs to take over." and i was just shouting to him, "i love you." we pushed him to the back. um, where my dad was holding him and holding his wounds to stop the blood. and i started to drive and i was just shouting back, use another pack. put it in the — put it in the wound. just before the quarry was — were all the dump trucks that had been ambushed three days before. they had placed bodies across the road. so we had to drive over the bodies to carry on going. by saturday morning we hadn't heard anything. and, uh... my manager, he phoned me with the news.

he started off with saying, "wes and greg are safe, but adrian didn't make it..." sniffles so, i said goodbye to him, and thank you for saving all of our lives. we then left him in the car and we ran into the bush. and then we hid in that bush and thick undergrowth for two days. four days after the attacks began, wesley and greg were finally rescued by lionel�*s pilots. they landed a small plane next to my brother and ijust held his hand the whole flight back. 17 vehicles left the amarula. it's estimated six didn't make it. johji and tobias made it to the shore and were

evacuated by boat. johji is now back home, with no work. he says he would go back to palma if morejobs come up. but the town is almost deserted, and total has suspended this project indefinitely. many believe the company has questions to answer about what happened. my personal opinion is, total do not value human life. i do not think they should have the right to operate in mozambique. because as far as i know, i grew up, a human life is worth more than anything. worth more than anything.

just imagine if i died on that road, do you think total would have taken care of my family? would they provide for my children? if they are not doing that, why should they have the right to take any mineral from this country? but there are also serious questions for the government about whether a lack of military strategy cost many citizens their lives. mozambique has now agreed to accept troops from its allies in southern africa, before the jihadism spreads. why was nothing done beforehand? this is going to come to an end, and it'sjust creeping further and further down the coast. before you know it, we're going to see it right here on our doorstep. the mozambiquean military did not provide a response to the bbc. total told the bbc that...

ancha and herfamily survived the crossing and reached the port of pemba. she gave birth to a healthy baby girl.

ancha's husband is still missing. now, they are just two of thousands stuck in temporary camps. while the foreign contractors may have gone home, for many mozambicans, this crisis is their everyday reality. nearly 3,000 people are thought to have been killed and 700,000 displaced by insurgent attacks in mozambique since 2017. ancha named her baby after the boat that rescued them — �*esperanza' — it name means hope.

hello again. the weekend's weather was always going to be dominated by showers, showers coming from big clouds like these that were spotted over the skylines of staffordshire, and the heavens opening not a million miles away. in moseley in birmingham, you can see surface water building up on the roads here. and then we have this line of storms that moved across the midlands and on into lincolnshire. moved across waddington, which is just south of lincoln itself, and it brought a real deluge. we had 25mm of rain in the space ofjust one hour. that is nearly half a month's worth of rain in the space of one hour, and i'm sure that would have caused one or two issues here.

now, at the moment we've got some areas of rain pushing northwards across scotland, some heavy showers slowly easing in northern ireland. there are one or two showers elsewhere, some fairly big ones working across northern england for the next hour or two. but later in the night we're going to see another area of rain moving up across southern areas of england and rain pushing into southern wales as well. now, this widespread area of rain will then move into parts of wales, the midlands and east anglia before then breaking out into showers later on in the day. but it's another day where those showers are going to be widespread, some of them torrential as well. could bring around 30 mm of rain in the space ofjust one hour, so again there is a risk of seeing some localised flooding in the heaviest of those downpours, and there will be some dry weather between those showers as well. 0n into monday and tuesday, we've got the next area of low pressure that's going to be swinging across the uk, so the weather certainly not settling down in any sense.

monday sees rain pushing northwards across scotland. sunshine and a few showers elsewhere, but generally a slightly drier kind of day for most of you. but then we've got this rain that's going to be moving into the south—west, accompanied by some strengthening winds through monday afternoon. monday night time and on into tuesday our area of low pressure pushes in, bringing the rain and pushing it northwards. gales developing around the coast initially in the south—west and then along the english channel coasts in the south—east by tuesday. showers follow our main band of rain through and it'll start to feel just a little fresher. temperatures around 17 to 19 degrees celsius. from there, later in the week those showers will gradually become a little bit less widespread. the weather slowly gets a little bit more settled, but before we get there, sunday will see plenty of heavy downpours.

welcome to bbc news. i'm lewis vaughan jones. our top stories: england's footballers are through to the semi—finals of euro 2020, after a 4—0 victory over ukraine. they'll now play denmark, while italy will take on spain in the other semi—final. in miami, an approaching storm accelerates plans to demolish the rest of the apartment block where 2a people died and more than a 120 are missing. tens of thousands of brazilian protesters call for president bolsonaro to resign over his handling of the coronavirus pandemic. canadian emergency services are trying to control over 100 wildfires, triggered by lightning strikes, and the record—breaking heat wave. tens of thousands of brazilian protesters call for president bolsonaro to resign over his handling

of the coronavirus pandemic. and hundreds of supermarkets in sweden are forced to close after a cyber—attack that's hit companies around the world.