Useful information
Prime News delivers timely, accurate news and insights on global events, politics, business, and technology
At least 34 people have been killed by Cyclone Chido in Mozambique since it made landfall on Sunday, the UN humanitarian agency OCHA said on Tuesday, citing figures from the southern African country’s disaster agency.
“As of December 17, 2024, a total of 174,158 people were estimated to have been affected, with 34 dead and 319 injured,” OCHA said in a statement.
Mozambique’s National Institute for Risk and Disaster Management (INGD) called the situation “heartbreaking.” reported the BBCand said the death toll will increase. An INGD spokesman told the BBC that most of the dead were hit by falling objects, such as destroyed brick walls.
Chido also destroyed or damaged 35,000 houses, affected nine schools and 10 health centers, according to preliminary reports by the Southern African Development Community Emergency and Humanitarian Operations Centre.
Drone images taken from Mozambique’s Cabo Delgado province showed thatched-roof houses razed near the coast and personal belongings scattered under the few palm trees still standing.
Electricity and communications have also been affected: the state electricity company Electricidade de Moçambique announced that around 200,000 customers are currently without electricity.
Thousands potentially dead in Mayotte
Chido made landfall in Mozambique after wreaking havoc on Mayotte, an Indian Ocean archipelago and France’s poorest overseas territory.
Hundreds or even thousands of people could have died in Mayotte, which suffered the worst impact from Cyclone Chido, French officials said. It is the strongest storm to hit the territory in 90 years.
So far 22 dead and some 1,400 injured have been confirmed, Ambdilwahedou Soumaila, mayor of the capital, Mamoudzou, told Radio France International. But many parts of Mayotte remain inaccessible and some victims were buried before their deaths could be officially counted.
Mathieu Gouzou, a sports teacher at Bouéni M’titi-Labattoir secondary school in the town of Dzaouzi, told Reuters when asked about the fate of his students: “It is impossible to find them all.
“Many of them live in the nearby shantytown, no one can go there.”
The International Federation of the Red Cross (IFRC) and Red Crescent Societies said the death toll was likely to be much higher as around a third of the island’s population was still missing due to poor communications.
“It is a small island with 300,000 inhabitants, and as the cyclone has disrupted electricity, Internet connection and telephone lines, some 100,000 people are still missing,” IFRC communications officer Nora Peter told Reuters.
It may take days to discover the full extent of the destruction. For the moment, essential goods, medical and technical personnel and the police arrived through the air bridge with La Reunión, the only lifeline in the territory.
“The priority today is water and food,” said Mayor Soumaila. “There are people who have unfortunately died when the bodies begin to decompose, which can create a health problem.”
“We don’t have electricity. When night falls, there are people who take advantage of that situation.”
Dr Claudia Lodesani of Doctors Without Borders said it was crucial to restore access to clean water to prevent the outbreak of cholera and other diseases.
SEE | Scenes of devastation in the French overseas territory Mayotte
France’s Interior Minister arrived in Mayotte on Monday after Cyclone Chido devastated much of the archipelago off east Africa, with a significant number of deaths feared in the densely populated territory.
“An epidemic is not inevitable, but there is a very high risk,” he said, stating that even before the storm, access to drinking water and sanitation was difficult in slums, where many immigrants live.
“France will repair the hospital quickly, but the situation in the slums is worrying,” Lodesani said.
More than three quarters of Mayotte’s 321,000 inhabitants live in relative poverty. According to 2021 figures from the INSEE statistics agency, Mayotte has an average annual disposable income of just over 3,000 euros (about 4,500 Canadian dollars) per inhabitant, approximately eight times less than the Île-de-France region around Paris. .
Concerns about undocumented immigrants
In mainland France, the disaster fueled a political dispute over immigration, the environment and France’s treatment of its overseas territories.
Mayotte has been dealing with unrest in recent years, with many residents angry about illegal immigration (mainly from nearby Comoros and Madagascar) and inflation.
Undocumented immigration has increased Mayotte’s population by approximately 100,000 people in the past 10 years, and the territory has become a stronghold of the far-right National Rally party.
France’s interim interior minister, Bruno Retailleau, of the conservative Republican party, said at a news conference in Mayotte that the early warning system had worked “perfectly” but that many of the undocumented had not gone to designated shelters.
Other officials have said undocumented immigrants may have been afraid to go to shelters for fear of arrest.
Left-wing politicians have pointed the finger at what they called the government’s negligence towards Mayotte and lack of preparation for natural disasters linked to climate change.
Meanwhile, France’s Interior Ministry said a curfew will come into effect on Tuesday night from 10 p.m. to 4 a.m. local time.
