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Mozambique cyclone death toll surges as UN steps up aid call

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Beira: The death toll in Mozambique on Saturday climbed to 417 after a cyclone pummelled swathes of the southern African country, flooding thousands of square kilometres, as the UN stepped up calls for more help for survivors.


Cyclone Idai smashed into the coast of central Mozambique on Friday last week, unleashing hurricane-force winds and rains that flooded the hinterland and drenched eastern Zimbabwe leaving a trail of destruction.


The new numbers take the combined death toll of the two neighbouring countries to 676.


The UN, warning of more suffering, stepped up calls for help in Mozambique as aid agencies struggle to assist tens of thousands of people battered by one of southern Africa’s most powerful cyclones.


A week after the storm lashed Mozambique with winds of nearly 200 kilometres per hour, survivors are struggling in desperate conditions — some still trapped on roof tops and those saved needing food and facing the risk of outbreaks of disease such as cholera.


“The situation will get worse before it gets better,” Unicef Executive Director Henrietta Fore said on Saturday.


“Aid agencies are barely beginning to see the scale of the damage,” she adding that “entire villages have been submerged, buildings have been flattened, and schools and healthcare centres have been destroyed”.


The World Food Programme late on Friday night declared the flood crisis a level three emergency, putting it on a par with crises in Yemen, Syria and South Sudan.


“The designation will accelerate the massive operational scale-up now under way to assist victims of last week’s Category 4 cyclone and subsequent large-scale flooding that claimed countless lives and displaced at least 600,000 people,” said WFP spokesman Herve Verhoosel.


More than two million people have been affected in Mozambique, Zimbabwe and in Malawi where the storm started as a tropical depression causing flooding which killed 60 and displaced nearly a million people.


Hundreds are still missing.


“Now that the world is beginning to grasp the scale of devastation and despair in the wake of Cyclone Idai, we as an international community are at a crucial moment to act,” Verhoosel said. Poor sanitary conditions mean disease is now a real concern.


“Already, some cholera cases have been reported in (the port city of) Beira along with an increasing number of malaria infections among people trapped by the flooding,” the International Federation of the Red Cross said in a statement. — AFP


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