Aid rescuers race to reach Mozambique cyclone victims
BEIRA, Mozambique: Aid workers raced on Wednesday to help survivors and meet spiralling humanitarian needs in three southern African countries battered by the region’s worst storm in years.
Five days after tropical cyclone Idai cut a swathe through Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Malawi, the confirmed death toll stood at more than 300 and hundreds of thousands of lives were at risk, officials said.
Mozambique, where the monster storm made landfall early last Friday, is reeling.
“We’ve thousands of people ... in roofs and trees waiting for rescue,” Caroline Haga, spokeswoman for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, said.
“We are running out of time. People have been waiting for rescue for more than three days now,” she told AFP in the stormravaged coastal city of Beira.
She added: “Unfortunately, we can’t pick up all the people, so our priority are children, pregnant women, injured people.”
Survivor Aunicia Jose, 24, speaking in the district of Buzi near Beira, said, “The situation is very bad, we haven’t eaten since Thursday, until today.
“We are sleeping outside, everything is destroyed, our houses are destroyed, everything is gone, we have recovered nothing.”
World Food Programme (WFP) spokeswoman Deborah Nguyen told AFP in Beira that “the priority today is to rush to rescue people trapped in the flooded areas” as much as organising temporary shelter for those rescued.
“The situation has not really improved. In Buzi, the villages are still under water but the good news is that there are many rescue teams working all day long. Relief operations are progressing, but there is still a lot of work.”
The UN said it was “one of the worst natural disasters in southern Africa”, and launched an international appeal for relief funds, having earlier said it was aiming to help some 600,000 people in coming weeks.
“We do not yet know enough about the level of destruction to give an accurate estimate of the amount of this call for funds, but it will be important,” spokesman Farhan Haq told reporters at UN headquarters in New York.
Mozambican President Filipe Nyusi said on Tuesday that 202 people had died, according to the latest toll, and nearly 350,000 people were at risk.
In Zimbabwe, the death toll stood at 100 on Wednesday but was expected to surge to 300, while up to 15,000 people are estimated to have been hit by the storm.
In Malawi, nearly a million people have been affected and more than 80,000 forced from their homes, according to the UN. — AFP