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MAPUTO/MUTARE. – Cyclone Idai has triggered a “massive disaster” in southern Africa affecting hundreds of thousands if not millions of people, the UN says.
The region has been hit by widespread flooding and devastation affecting Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Malawi.
Mozambique President Filipe Nyusi has called it “a humanitarian disaster of great proportion”.
He said more than 1 000 people may have been killed after the cyclone hit the country last week.
Cyclone Idai made landfall near the port city of Beira in Sofala province on Thursday with winds of up to 177 km/h.
“We need all the logistical support that we can get,” Christian Lindmeier from the UN’s World Health Organisation said.
Buzi town, which is estimated to be home to more than 2,500 children, could be under water within 24 hours, Save The Children warned.
The governor of neighbouring Manica province, Manuel Rodrigues, says there is an urgent need to rescue people still trapped.
“It’s very sad and very complicated, given what we saw when we flew over the area. We saw people besieged and asking for help,” Mr Rodrigues told reporters.
“They were on top of their roofs made up of zinc sheets. Others under flood waters. We saw many people. Unfortunately, they are many people.
“We can only imagine that they had been there for more than two or three days, without food and without clean drinking water.”
Floods of up to six metres deep had caused “incredible devastation” over a huge area in Mozambique, World Food Programme regional chief Lola Castro said.
“This is shaping up to be one of the worst weather-related disasters ever to hit the southern hemisphere, if the report by (Mozambique’s) president and other agencies are confirmed, in terms of the causality toll,” Clare Nullis from the UN’s weather agency told the BBC.
At least 1.7 million people were in the direct path of the cyclone in Mozambique and 920,000 have been affected in Malawi, the UN said.
In Zimbabwe, at least 20,000 houses have been partially damaged in the south-eastern town of Chipinge, 600 others were completely destroyed.
Local officials say they are distributing rice and maize from the national food reserve to those displaced. In Mozambique, several aid agencies are assisting government efforts in the search and rescue operations and in the distribution of food aid, ReliefWeb reports.
Telecoms Sans Frontiers has sent a team to Beira to help set up communication networks – which has been severely hindered – for humanitarian operations.
Many aid trucks are stuck on the impassable roads and unable to reach their destinations. The conditions have also limited air operations.
Mozambique’s National Institute for Disaster Management is also housing 3,800 families in Sofala province.
A cargo plane carrying emergency supplies is also expected to arrive in Mozambique on Tuesday, Sacha Myers, from Save The Children said. – BBC.
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