Storm kills scores in neighbouring states
MAPUTO: At least 48 people have been killed in Mozambique and 39 in Zimbabwe after tropical cyclone Idai tore through the two southern African countries, officials and media said yesterday.
Dozens of others were missing after the storm brought strong winds, heavy rains and flash flooding, destroying bridges and sweeping away homes in parts of the two adjacent nations.
Mozambique’s state-owned Jornal Domingo newspaper reported that 48 people had died so far in the worst-hit central Sofala province.
Zimbabwean government spokesperson Nick Mangwana said the death toll in the country was at 39. “Rescue and recovery efforts are ongoing.”
He said most of the deaths occurred in the Ngangu township situated in a valley in Chimanimani town, where more than 100 houses were washed away.
Two of the victims were pupils who died after a landslide sent a boulder crashing into their dormitory, collapsing the wall of the dining room and trapping 50 of them, the country’s Department of Civil Protection said.
The boarding school was shut as the army moved in to take the nearly 200 pupils to safety.
The UN said more than 100 people were missing in Zimbabwe and that up to 9 600 were affected by the cyclone.
About 300 refugees who were housed at the Tongogara refugee camp in the south-east have been affected and 49 houses damaged.
Strong winds ripped roofs off prison cells in the southern city of Masvingo, according to state broadcaster ZBC.
Zimbabwe’s President Emmerson Mnangagwa, who cut short his visit to Abu Dhabi, has declared a state of disaster in the affected areas.
Tropical cyclone Idai battered central Mozambique on Friday, cutting off more than half a million residents of the port city Beira.
The city’s airport was set to reopen yesterday as flights began taking off from the capital Maputo bound for Beira.
An AFP journalist on a flight to Beira said most passengers were going to check on their families, who they hadn’t heard from since the cyclone struck.
Portuguese businessman Luis Leonor, 49, who owns a software company in Beira, said he had spoken to his wife via satellite phone on Saturday.
“She is fine. My house is fine but there’s no more running water. I don’t know what I will find there. My five employees lost their houses, they are staying at our offices,” he said.
Beira International Airport had been shut after the air traffic control tower and navigation equipment were destroyed by the cyclone.
Even before the cyclone made landfall on Friday, heavy rains earlier in the week had already claimed 66 lives and forced 17 000 people from their homes in Mozambique, local officials said.
They also affected neighbouring Malawi, where 56 people died.