By mid-2018, the African Union claimed that Islamic State militants had infiltrated northern Mozambique, where the Islamist rebels of Ansar al-Sunna had already waged an insurgency since 2017. In May 2018, some Mozambican rebels posted a photo of themselves posing with a black flag which was used by ISIL, but also other Jihadist groups. Overall, the presence of ISIL in Mozambique remained disputed at the time, and the country's police strongly denied that Islamic State loyalists were active in the area.