An Islamist insurgency in the east African nation has driven more than half a million people from their homes in the past year, but aid agencies say it's a humanitarian crisis that the rest of the world has ignored.

A BBC team has reached the besieged town at the heart of the conflict, the first international journalists to do so.

Our Africa correspondent Andrew Harding has sent us this report from Palmer in Kabo Delgado region of Mozambique.

It looks alluring, but below us, northern Mozambique is now a place of terror.

We're flying into Palmer, a small town under siege.

All roads cut the outskirts unnervingly empty.

In town, we find traumatized families.

These Children have just fled their village on foot, seeking refuge.

Here.

Their uncle holds up an ID card.

His brother's beheaded with six others at the weekend.

We have nothing left now, says Syed Ahmad.

The men who attacked our village told us, We kill as we please.

We are al Shabaab, and here is Al Shabaab homegrown insurgency, now linked to the Islamic state group with a taste for abductions.

and butchery.

Its fighters have swept through this region with bewildering speed.

A savage, scorched earth offensive.

No wonder people in Palmer are close to panic.

Food supplies running low.

Mom, your son.

My.

The situation here in Palmer really is very grim, and you can see the frustration and the desperation amongst local people because there's simply no food.

And what food there is is incredibly expensive, very, very angry.

I'm very angry.

I have three days without eating nothing, and I'm here.

But I don't get nothing.

As we fly out of Palmer.

A glimpse of building work for a multibillion dollar gas project Resource rich Mozambique could be wealthy, but the money rarely seems to reach the public.

Instead, poverty, resentment and now conflict.

We're heading to a makeshift camp for displaced families.

In the past year, Al Shabaab have forced half a million people in this remote region to run for their lives.

I have You've got a real sense here of the scale of the conflict and also how quickly it's accelerating.

This camp alone had about 60,000 people in it three months ago.

Today it's doubled in size.

The conditions are bleak, so are the stories that people have carried with them.

Many Children from our village are here alone.

Their mothers were abducted, says Amina Bakar.

They took my 14 year old granddaughter, says Alberto Carlos.

I can only guess what's happened to her against these militants.

Mozambique's government forces are struggling, to put it politely.

They've hired private foreign security companies to help out, but both have been accused of human rights abuses.

And still, the exodus of civilians continues.

Many fleeing by boat along the coast, right on a beach, Fatimah Abdul shows me her makeshift tent, but the smiles hide her trauma.

During their escape, her 22 year old daughter was torn from her arms by an Al Shabaab militant.

I watched them take her, she says.

Then they set fire to our village.

Yeah, and so it is that a tranquil corner of Africa sinks into chaos and despair.