• Red Cross loses contact with over 350 of its people in Mayotte
• French PM under fire for chairing town hall meeting amid disaster

MAPUTO: Cyclone Chido claimed at least 34 lives after sweeping across Mozambique, the National Institute of Risk and Disaster Management announced on Tuesday.

The cyclone first hit the country on Sunday at the Cabo Delgado province, where 28 people were killed, the centre said, releasing its latest information as of Monday evening. Three other people died in Nampula province and three in Niassa, further inland, it said.

Another 319 people were reported injured by the cyclone, which brought winds of around 260 kilometres an hour and heavy rainfall of around 250 millimetres in 24 hours, the centre said.

Nearly 23,600 homes and 170 fishing boats were destroyed and 175,000 people affected by the storm, it added. Chido struck a part of northern Mozambique that is regularly battered by cyclones and is already vulnerable because of conflict and underdevelopment.

The cyclone landed in Mozambique after hitting the Indian Ocean island of Mayotte, where it is feared to have killed hundreds of people.

As the French Indian Ocean island of Mayotte grappled with the devastation of cyclone, France’s new Prime Minister Francois Bayrou on Tuesday fended off a torrent of criticism after he chaired a provincial town hall meeting.

The controversy erupted less than a week after Bayrou was named as the sixth prime minister of President Emmanuel Macron’s mandate with the task of ending months of political crisis.

The veteran centrist had already ruffled some feathers by insisting that he would keep his post as mayor of the south-western city of Pau while serving as prime minister.

Bayrou went to Pau on Monday evening to attend the town hall meeting where he confirmed that he would stay on in the post that he has held for the last decade. His presence there meant he had to attend a meeting called by Macron on the Mayotte crisis by video. French National Assembly speaker Yael Braun-Pivet, a member of Macron’s centrist party, criticised the trip to Pau.

“In the face of such a catastrophe — of a kind that has not been seen on French territory for decades — it is important to be side-by-side with the people. “I would have preferred that the prime minister, instead of taking a plane for Pau, took a plane for Mamoudzou,” she told Franceinfo radio, referring to Mayotte’s capital.

Out of contact

The French Red Cross said on Tuesday it was out of contact with most of its people in France’s Indian Ocean territory Mayotte, days after Cyclone Chido ripped through the islands.

Cyclone Chido barrelled into the archipelago at the weekend, leaving health services in tatters, power and mobile phone services knocked out and the airport closed to civilian flights, while there is mounting concern about how to ensure supplies of drinking water.

The French Red Cross said it had 300 volunteers and 137 employees in Mayotte.

“Since the cyclone, due to communication breakdowns and power cuts, (the French Red Cross) has been struggling to reach them. To date, it has been able to contact 70,” a spokeswoman said in an email.

The fact that many were so far unaccounted for “does not mean at this stage that they are missing”, she stressed, adding that efforts to reach the rest were being stepped up.

“We are talking about more than 200 volunteers already affected and ... missing,” IFRC spokesman Tommaso Della Longa told BBC television. “They don’t have any contact with them.”

Hunger

Authorities in Mayotte struggled on Tuesday to stop hunger, disease and lawlessness from spreading in the French overseas territory after the weekend’s devastating cyclone.

Hundreds or even thousands could be dead in Mayotte, which took the strongest hit from Cyclone Chido, French officials have said. The storm laid waste to large parts of the Indian Ocean archipelago, France’s poorest overseas territory, before striking the African mainland.

Essential goods, medical and technical staff and police were arriving via the air bridge with La Reunion, the territory’s only lifeline.

With many parts of Mayotte still inaccessible and some victims buried before their deaths could be officially counted, it may take days to discover the full extent of the destruction.

So far, 22 deaths and about 1,400 injuries have been confirmed, Ambdilwahedou Soumaila, the mayor of the capital Mamoudzou, told Radio France Internationale.

“The priority today is water and food,” Soumaila said. “There are people who have unfortunately died where the bodies are starting to decompose that can create a sanitary problem.” “We don’t have electricity. When night falls, there are people who take advantage of that situation.”

Published in Dawn, December 18th, 2024