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Tens of thousands of people in the extreme north of Mozambique are preparing for violent floods as torrential rains cause water levels to rise after the death and devastation of Hurricane Kenneth.
The first floods have already been observed in parts of Pemba, capital of Cabo Delgado province, as well as in the surrounding areas, hit by heavy rains since daybreak, AFP reporters reported.
Fields on the outskirts of the city that were green a day earlier were now flooded by floods.
"It's been raining a lot since Sunday morning," said Deborah Nguyen, spokesperson for the UN World Food Program. "Violent floods are expected in and around Pemba.
"We are very worried because, according to forecasts, heavy rains are expected in the next four days," she added.
"We expect the rainfall to be twice as high as the cyclone Idai hit the city of Beira last month."
Idai hit central Mozambique six weeks ago and communities in the region are still in shock from the floods that have washed away homes, roads and bridges, killing nearly 1,000 people and leaving hundreds of thousands homeless .
This time, about 1,000 kilometers further north, the city of Pemba and its 400,000 inhabitants face the same dangers.
& # 39; We are afraid & # 39;
"The houses have begun to collapse in the neighborhood of Natite, according to the rescue team that operates there," said Sunday the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in a tweet.
"We are unfortunately waiting for devastating floods as a consequence of #CycloneKenneth".
According to figures provided by Mozambican authorities to NGOs, around 200,000 people in Pemba are at risk.
In the small village of Mieze, about twenty kilometers to the southwest, dozens of people gathered in the hope of being rescued by boat.
"We are worried about the worsening floods because we do not know where they are going to go," AFP Filomeno Sira, 45, whose home is one kilometer from the plain, told AFP. flood of Mieze, in full growth.
"The government said we had to go to the top of the hill if the water continued to rise – and we would go in. We are afraid because we do not know."
According to a preliminary badessment released Sunday by the National Institute of Disaster Management (INGC), five people have died, more than 23,000 people are homeless and nearly 35,000 homes have been totally or partially destroyed.
A number of UN agencies have deployed intervention teams in Pemba.
North of the provincial capital, the city of Macomia counted the cost of damage Sunday with homes and businesses destroyed, torn roofs, trees and electric pylons torn off.
The World Food Program (WFP) has started distributing food rations to stranded people, but has been forced to suspend activities in the most remote areas where roads have been cut. A helicopter was to arrive in Pemba to resume operations as soon as possible.
Recovery efforts
"We have great fears for the thousands of families who are currently settling in the rubble of their homes, who urgently need food, water and shelter to survive," he said. said Nicholas Finney, head of the Save the Children response team in Mozambique.
"The weather service had informed us of the storm, but we had not realized the magnitude of the cyclone before the cyclone occurred," Macomia Mayor Fernando Neves said at the time. ; AFP.
"As you can see, we are now trying to rebuild our lives after this storm and get back to normal … It's very difficult."
In the city center, the medical staff had to cope with what he had, without electricity and without medication.
"This patient has not eaten and we have no anti-malaria," said Joaquim Benedito, a nurse at the Macomia health center, beckoning to Nordine Joao, a malaria patient. and aged 15, treated in a closet stock.
"He was sleeping outside when the hurricane arrived."
Cyclone Kenneth is much less populated than Beira, hit by Cyclone Idai in mid-March.
But the region has also been hit hard by the deadly raids of a jihadist group over the last 18 months, which the army has not been able to control.
Before striking Mozambique, Kenneth pbaded through the Comoros Islands.
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