Cylcone Idai barrelled across the southern African nations of Mozambique and Zimbabwe killing more than 120 people on Sunday. Authorities in both countries fear that number will rise as search and rescue team step up the search for victims.
Dozens more people remain unaccounted for.
“I think this is the biggest natural disaster Mozambique has ever faced. Everything is destroyed. Our priority now is to save human lives,” said Mozambique’s environment minister Celso Correia at Beira International Airport, which re-opened Sunday after being temporarily closed because of damage.
In Zimbabwe, eastern Chimanimani district was the worst hit part of the country, with eyewitnesses reporting heavy rains sweeping away roads, homes and bridges and knocked out power and communication lines.
“So far we’re looking at 65 people who have lost their lives,” Joshua Sacco, lawmaker for Chimanimani, told AFP by phone, adding that between “150 to 200 people” are missing.
Projections by the World Food Programme (WFP) indicate at-least 1.7 million people were in the direct path of the cyclone in Mozambique, and 920,000 people were affected in Malawi. Thousands more are potentially impacted by events in Zimbabwe where assessments are ongoing.
Even before the cyclone made landfall on Friday, heavy rains earlier this month had already claimed 66 lives in Mozambique and 56 in Malawi.
According to the United Nations, more than 100 people have died in weeks of heavy rain and flooding in Mozambique and Malawi, where some villages were left underwater.
The government has declared a state of disaster in areas affected by the storm, the worst to hit the country since Cyclone Eline devastated eastern and southern Zimbabwe in 2000.
