Maputo - Aid workers in northern
Mozambique scrambled planes and helicopters packed with aid to
communities cut off, sometimes without any supplies, for at
least two days after Cyclone Kenneth brought torrential rain to
the region.
Kenneth slammed into Mozambique's Cabo Delgado province on
Thursday, killing at least 38 people, flattening entire villages
and bringing relentless downpours that grounded aid operations
and turned streets in the port city of Pemba to rivers.
More rain was expected on Tuesday, and aid workers raced to
mobilise before it started again.
A light plane was on its way to Matemo island with medical
supplies while a helicopter was moving food and health
provisions to the mainland district of Quissanga, the United
Nations (UN) said via WhatsApp and on Twitter.
After Quissanga, the World Food Programme (WFP) was planning
to travel to the island of Ibo, where up to 90 percent of homes
were flattened, Deborah Nguyen, WFP spokeswoman, said.
Kenneth, packing storm surges and winds of up to 280 km per
hour, devastated villages and islands along a 60-kilometre
stretch of coastline in Mozambique's north. Nearly 35 000 houses
have been completely or partially destroyed, the government
said, with infrastructure and crops also wrecked.
The death toll is expected to rise further as officials make
their way to areas that have not yet been reached. Kenneth has
dumped more than 570 millimetres of rain in Pemba and is
forecast to bring more.
It struck just six weeks after Cyclone Idai destroyed the
port city of Beira, further south, and brought deadly floods,
submerging entire villages, vast swathes of land and 700 000
hectares of crops. It killed over 1 000 people across
Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Malawi.
Kenneth has caused the Megaruma river to overflow, prompting
flooding in the district of Mecufi, south of Pemba, and five
villages, the National Directorate of Water Resources Management
said. Water levels in a number of rivers in the north are still
climbing.
Rivers in their region are expected to hit their "flood
peak" between Tuesday and Thursday, analysis commissioned by
Britain's Department for International Development has
estimated.
It also killed four people in the Comoros before smashing
into Mozambique, marking the first time on record two powerful
storms had hit the country in such a short space of time.