CAPE TOWN, South Africa (AP) — France sent aid by ship and military aircraft to its Indian Ocean overseas territory of Mayotte on Monday after the island was devastated by its worst storm in nearly a century.
Authorities in Mayotte fear that hundreds and possibly thousands of people have died in the path of Cyclone Chido, although the official death count on Monday morning was 14. Rescue teams and medical personnel were sent to the island, located opposite the east coast of Africa, from France and from the nearby French territory of Réunion, as well as tons of supplies.
French television station TF1 reported Monday morning that Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau had arrived in Mamoudzou, the capital of Mayotte. “It will take days and days to establish the number of human victims,” he told French media.
French authorities said more than 800 additional people were expected to arrive in the coming days, as rescuers surveyed the devastation caused by Chido when it hit the populous archipelago of around 300,000 people on Saturday.
Mayotte Prefect François-Xavier Bieuville, the top French government official in Mayotte, told local television station Mayotte la 1ere on Sunday that the death toll was several hundred people and could even reach thousands. He said Mayotte’s poor slums, made up of metal shacks and other informal structures, had suffered terrible damage and authorities were struggling to accurately count the dead and injured after the worst cyclone to hit Mayotte since a decade. from 1930.
Entire neighborhoods have been razed, while public infrastructure such as the main airport and hospital have been severely damaged and power supplies have been disrupted, French authorities said. Damage to the airport control tower means that only military aircraft can fly to Mayotte, which complicated the response.
Mayotte is the poorest department in France and is considered the poorest territory in the European Union, but is a target for economic migration from even poorer countries such as Comoros and even Somalia due to a better standard of living and welfare system. French.
Bieuville, the prefect of Mayotte, said it would be extremely difficult to count all the dead and many may never be recorded, due in part to the Muslim tradition of burying people within 24 hours of their death and also due to the many migrants who live on the island without a residence permit.
Chido swept across the southwestern Indian Ocean on Friday and Saturday, also affecting the nearby islands of Comoros and Madagascar. However, Mayotte was directly in the path of the cyclone and received the greatest impact. Chido packed winds of more than 220 kilometers per hour (136 miles per hour), according to the French meteorological service, making it a Category 4 cyclone, the second strongest on the scale.
It made landfall in Mozambique on the African continent late on Sunday, where authorities and aid agencies have said more than 2 million people could be affected in another poor country where health facilities are already limited. Mozambique media reported that three people had died in the north of the country, where the cyclone made landfall, but said that was a very preliminary count.
Further inland, Malawi and Zimbabwe have also made preparations for possible evacuations due to flooding as Chido continues its eastward path, although the cyclone has weakened as it passed over land.
The cyclone season in the southwestern Indian Ocean lasts from December to March, and southern Africa has been hit by a series of strong storms in recent years. Cyclone Idai in 2019 killed more than 1,300 people, mainly in Mozambique, Malawi and Zimbabwe. Cyclone Freddy left more than 1,000 dead in several countries in the Indian Ocean and southern Africa last year.
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AP Africa News: https://apnews.com/hub/africa
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This story was translated from English by an AP editor with the help of a generative artificial intelligence tool.
This article was published by GERALD IMRAY on 2024-12-16 09:49:00
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