More survivors pulled to safety
● Rescue efforts continue in cyclone-hit Mozambique as death toll rises and thousands more wait to be saved
Rescue workers plucked more survivors from trees and roofs to safety on Thursday, a week after a cyclone ripped through Southern Africa, triggering devastating floods that have killed hundreds of people and displaced hundreds of thousands.
The death toll in Mozambique has risen to 217 and around 15,000 people, many of them very ill, still need to be rescued, land and environment minister Celso Correia said, though rescue workers continue to find bodies and the toll could rise sharply.
“Our biggest fight is against the clock,” Correia told a news conference, adding that 3,000 people had so far been rescued.
In neighbouring Zimbabwe, the death toll jumped to 139.
The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP), which is co-ordinating food drops, said 200,000 Zimbabweans would need urgent food aid for three months.
In Malawi, 56 people were confirmed dead.
“This is a catastrophe. Cyclone Idai has destroyed so much in an [instant] and it will take years for people to recover what they have lost,” Edgar Jone, country director in Mozambique for the Christian aid charity Tearfund, said.
Helicopters whirred above the turbid, reddish-brown floodwaters searching for people to ferry back to the port city of Beira, the main headquarters for the huge rescue operation.
One helicopter returned with four children and two women, rescued from a small football stadium in an otherwise submerged village.
One young child, with a broken leg, was alone and limp from exhaustion as rescuers laid him on the grass before moving him to an ambulance.
With more rains forecast, Christian worshippers sang hymns on an empty tract of land where a pulpit was all that remained of their pentecostal church.
“Here in Beira, all the churches have collapsed from this cyclone. Oh my dear brothers, please pray for us,” Pastor Luis Semente said.
With some flood waters starting to recede, environment minister Correia said, the priority now was to deliver food and other supplies to people rather than take people out of the affected areas, though that was also still happening.
Private TV station STV put the number of people still trapped in risky areas of Mozambique at 350,000 and said as many as 60,000 were believed stuck on roofs, trees and other higher places.
The numbers could not be independently confirmed.
Cyclone Idai lashed Beira with winds of up to 170km/h a week ago, then moved inland to Zimbabwe and Malawi, flattening buildings and putting the lives of millions at risk.
A key priority was pushing into remaining areas affected by the flooding that had not yet been explored, South African rescue task force leader Connor Hartnady said.
Rescuers also want to move people from a basketball stadium near the Buzi river to a village on higher ground, where
STV put the number of people still trapped in risky areas at 350,000
aid organisations are setting up a temporary camp.
The US military stands ready to help the rescue effort, a US Agency for International Development representative said, according to the minutes of a meeting on Wednesday.
China, a major investor in Mozambique, also expressed willingness to help, Portugal’s Lusa agency reported. –