Cyclone Idai batters Mozambique coastal city, several injured

MAPUTO: A powerful tropical storm made landfall in Mozambique on Thursday evening, battering a coastal city with heavy rain and wind at speeds of up to up 170 km an hour and injuring several people.

In Beira, a city of around 500,000 people and a gateway for imports to landlocked countries in southeast Africa, Twitter images and television footage showed billboards and rooftops blown off, trees snapped and electricity cables strewn across the streets.

In the northern Zambezi province, villages along the coastline were cut off from the mainland by the storm surge.

Mozambican television channel TVM reported that at least five people had been seriously injured.

Cyclone Idai dumped more water and brought destruction on areas where scores of people have already been killed and tens of thousands displaced by floods over the past week.

The Mozambican government’s emergency services have yet to give an update on the situation. The storm was also expected to hit parts of neighbouring Malawi.

“Cyclone Idai made landfall at about midnight and is now lying north west off Beira,” said Jan Vermeulen, senior forecaster at South African Weather service.

“We don’t have any communications from the area. This is an intense tropical cyclone, and I think there’s a lot of damage to infrastructure which is probably responsible for the loss in communications.” — Reuters