Hundreds feared dead on Mayotte after Cyclone Chido

A senior official said Sunday that the death toll from cyclone Chido’s passage across Mayotte would be in the hundreds, perhaps even thousands, as France rushed in rescue workers and supplies.

Their efforts will likely be hindered by the damage to airports and electricity distribution in the French Indian Ocean territory.

Even before the cyclone’s passage, clean drinking water was already subject to chronic shortages.

“I think there will definitely be several hundred, perhaps we will come close to a thousand or even several thousand” deaths, prefect Francois-Xavier Bieuville told broadcaster Mayotte la Premiere.

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It would be “very difficult to reach a final count” given that most residents are Muslim, traditionally burying their dead within 24 hours, he added.

A previous toll shared with AFP by a security source had confirmed only 14 deaths.

And earlier Sunday, the mayor of Mayotte’s capital Mamoudzou, Ambdilwahedou Soumaila, said nine people were fighting for their lives in hospital, while another 246 more had been seriously injured.

“The hospital is hit, the schools are hit. Houses are totally devastated,” he said. The storm had “spared nothing”, he added.

Establishing an accurate will be doubly difficult given that France’s interior ministry estimates around 100,000 people live clandestinely on Mayotte.

Just northwest of Mayotte, the Comoros islands, some of which had been on red alert since Friday, were also hit, but suffered only minor damage.

Cyclone Chido later brought gale-force winds and heavy rain to Mozambique, making landfall early Sunday around 40 kilometres (25 miles) south of the northern city of Pemba, weather services said.

It damaged buildings and knocked out power in some areas of Mozambique’s northern coastal provinces of Nampula and Cabo Delgado early Saturday, authorities said.