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A tropical cyclone has devastated Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Malawi. By AMOS GUMULIRA (AFP / File)
More than 100 people have died and many others are missing in Mozambique and neighboring Zimbabwe after tropical cyclone Idai pbaded through southern African countries on Sunday, with flash floods and fierce winds. .
Zimbabwean authorities said the death toll was 65 in the east of the country, while Mozambique said 48 people were killed in the center of the country affected by the hurricane on Friday and Saturday.
A parliamentarian from Chimanimani District in Zimbabwe – the most affected part of the country – announced the updated balance sheet and added that many remains were missing, after houses and bridges were washed away by sudden floods when the storm hit hit the area.
The most affected areas are not yet accessible, while strong winds and dense clouds have prevented the theft of military rescue helicopters.
"Until now, we are looking at 65 people who have lost their lives," AFP phone Joshua Sacco, MP for Chimanimani, told AFP.
"We are probably expecting 150 to 200 missing," he said.
Most of the missing people are believed to be government employees, whose housing complex has been completely engulfed by rushing waters. Their fate is currently unknown because the region is still inaccessible.
"We are very worried because all these houses were suddenly submerged under the water and were literally washed away and that is what makes about 147 missing," he said. "It's very sad and the situation is serious."
The United Nations in Zimbabwe said nearly 10,000 people had been affected by the cyclone.
Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwa, who briefly suspended his visit to Abu Dhabi following the hurricane, said the state of disaster in the affected areas.
Government spokesman Nick Mangwana told AFP that "rescue and recovery efforts are continuing".
Violent winds ripped the roofs of prison buildings in Masvingo town in the south of the country, according to the state television channel ZBC.
Some 300 refugees in the Tongogara refugee camp in the south-east were affected and 49 homes damaged.
Cut city
In neighboring Mozambique, where the hurricane struck for the first time on Thursday night, the state-owned newspaper, Jornal Domingo, reported that 48 people had been killed, with deaths recorded in the province of Sofala, the more affected in the center of the country.
The tropical cyclone Idai hit central Mozambique on Friday, blocking more than half a million people in the port city of Beira.
Beira International Airport was briefly closed after the air traffic control tower and navigation equipment was partially destroyed by the cyclone.
The airport was scheduled to reopen Sunday as flights depart from the capital, Maputo, bound for Beira.
An AFP journalist aboard a flight to Beira said that most of the pbadengers would check with their families which they had not heard from since the cyclone.
Portuguese businessman Luis Leonor, 49 years old and owner of a software company in Beira, told AFP, while waiting for boarding in Maputo, that he had spoken to his wife by satellite phone on Saturday.
"She's fine, my house is fine, but there is no running water, I do not know what I'm going to find there," he said.
"My five employees have lost their homes, they stay in our offices."
President Filipe Nyusi, who suspended a working visit to eSwatini, was due to travel to Beira.
Even before the hurricane landed on Friday, heavy rains earlier in the week had already killed 66 people and forced 17,000 people from their homes in Mozambique, local officials said.
They also touched neighboring Malawi, where 56 people died.
burs-sn / klm
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