Emmanuel Macron announced Monday, December 16 that he would go “to Mayotte in the coming days in support” of people hit by the deadly passage of Cyclone Chido, “of civil servants and mobilized relief forces”.
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“It’s about facing emergencies and starting to prepare for the future,” the president said on X after a government crisis meeting. “Faced with this tragedy which upsets each of us, I will declare national mourning,” he added.
Emmanuel Macron chaired a meeting at the crisis center of the Ministry of the Interior on Monday at 6 p.m. Prime Minister François Bayrou, in Pau for the municipal council, followed the interministerial meeting remotely.
Assistance from the United States
With wind gusts of more than 220 km/h, the cyclone – the most intense that Mayotte has experienced in 90 years – ravaged on Saturday the territory where around a third of the population lives in precarious housing, completely destroyed. . The resigning Ministers of the Interior and Overseas Territories Bruno Retailleau and François-Noël Buffet, as well as their Mahorais colleague Thani Mohamed Soilihi (Francophonie) went on Monday to Mayotte, where the authorities fear “several hundred” deaths, possibly -be “a few thousand”.
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“It will take days and days to get the results,” warned Bruno Retailleau. The count is complicated by the fact that Mayotte is a land with a strong Muslim tradition and that, according to Islamic rites, many of the deceased were probably buried within 24 hours of their death.
The United States also declared on Monday that it was prepared to provide assistance to Mayotte. “We are prepared to provide appropriate humanitarian assistance,” said State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller, offering American condolences to the victims. He was not in a position to provide details or whether a specific request had been made.
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