As in Mayotte and Malawi, Cyclone Chido sowed death on Sunday in Mozambique. At least 73 people have died in this southern African country, according to an updated report released Thursday by the National Institute for Risk and Disaster Management.
The count in Mozambique of victims of the cyclone rose by around thirty deaths in one day. Faced with the extent of the disaster, the Mozambican government has declared two days of national mourning, this Friday and Saturday.
Nearly 330,000 people affected in Mozambique
In addition to causing nearly 550 injuries, the depression completely destroyed almost 40,000 homes in this country, one of the poorest on the planet, according to the new report. Nearly 330,000 people are affected by this natural disaster in the Portuguese-speaking state, mainly in the province of Cabo Delgado, in the north, where 66 people were killed.
The depression, although having lost intensity as it sank inland, continued on Monday its course 500 kilometers further to Malawi, where the authorities recorded 13 deaths linked to the storm on Wednesday.
Unicef is worried
If the provisional figures remain lower than the “hundreds” of deaths feared by France in Mayotte, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) warns of the “spread of diseases such as cholera, malaria, diarrhea”, which are “particularly dangerous for children”, indicated Guy Taylor, head of the UN agency in Mozambique.
Our file on the situation in Mayotte
In Mayotte, Emmanuel Macron, who was on site on Thursday, recognized that it was “likely that there were many more victims” than the 31 dead and more than 2,000 injured “officially counted”. A large part of this French department, the poorest in the country, remains deprived of water, electricity and telephone network five days after the passage of the most violent cyclone it has experienced in ninety years.
