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THE DEATH TOLL in Mozambique following Cyclone Idai could reach over 1,000, President Filipe Nyusi has suggested.
The cyclone hit the city of Beri on Thursday, before it moved into neighbouring Zimbabwe, unleashing fierce winds and flash floods.
The official death toll currently stands at 84 in Mozambique.
“When we flew over the area… this morning to understand what’s going on, everything indicates that we could register more than 1,000 deaths,” Mozambican President Filipe Nyusi said in a nationwide address.
This is a real humanitarian disaster. More than 100,000 people are in danger.
Aerial photographs released by a Christian non-profit organisation, the Mission Aviation Fellowship, showed groups of people stuck on roof tops with flood waters up to window level.
“The scale of damage… (in) Beira is massive and horrifying”, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) said.
90% of the city of some 530,000 people and its surrounding area has been “damaged or destroyed,” it said in a statement.
“The situation is terrible. The scale of devastation is enormous,” an IFRC spokesperson said.
Almost everything is destroyed. Communication lines have been completely cut and roads have been destroyed. Some affected communities are not accessible.
President Nyusi said the Pungwe and Buzi rivers in central Mozambique ”have burst their banks and engulfed entire villages”.
“Communities are isolated and bodies are floating” on the waters, he said.
Beira International Airport was closed because of cyclone damage. However, it later reopened.
Zimbabwe hit
In neighbouring Zimbabwe, Idai has also caused significant damage.
It swept away homes and ripped bridges to pieces, leaving destruction that the acting Defence Minister, Perrance Shiri, said “resembles the aftermath of a full-scale war”.
“There was a lot of destruction both on our facilities and on people,” said Shiri, speaking on television from the affected eastern highlands region.
Some roads were swallowed up by massive sinkholes, while bridges were ripped to pieces by flash floods, according to an AFP photographer.
“This is the worst infrastructural damage we have ever had,” Transport and Infrastructural Development Minister Joel Biggie Matiza said.
The eastern district of Chimanimani was the worst-hit area, with houses and most of the region’s bridges washed away by flash floods.
The most affected areas of the country are not yet accessible. High winds and dense clouds have hampered military rescue helicopter flights.
Joshua Sacco, lawmaker for Chimanimani, told AFP that between “150 to 200 people” are missing.
The majority of them are thought to be government workers, whose housing complex was completely engulfed by raging waters.
Their fate was unknown because the area was still unreachable.
“We are very worried because all these houses were just suddenly submerged under water and literally washed away and that is where we have about 147 missing,” he said.
Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwa cut short his visit to Abu Dhabi, saying on his return home today that “we are deeply grieved as a nation”.
Includes reporting by - © AFP 2019
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Shuffle himself out hopefully
@Eugene Tyson: The fact is Varadkar and his party are getting hammered on social media where the spin doctors can’t control the content, He knows he won’t get back in because his policies are a disaster.
@Dot Com: Exactly, he’d want to replace them all and appoint a new Tanaiste while he’s at it, people who actually concentrate on their jobs and take their duties seriously and conscientiously Lio won’t last himself anyway, the way things are going..
@Dot Com: do you need to broaden your echo chamber perhaps? Im no fan but fg and leo are still the likely party to lead next time check the opinion polls
@Carpentoza: Those phony phone calls they make to the usual 1000 people? These polls are used to ‘shape’ rather than ‘gauge’ public opinion. Who are the directors/shareholders of the polling companies?
@Carpentoza: I’m no fan but, Stop fooling your self pal, time to come out as an FGer.
@Dot Com: social media is irrelevant. Old people don’t read social media.
@Dot Com: But he will get back in.
@Tommy Berry: Everbody knows he wont/
@Chin Feeyin: Another misconception!
@Nuala Mc Namara: True, its also funny how few government apologists are on here trying to defend FFG. Maybe they are still in bed having a LIE-ON.
@Dot Com: The spin doctors control 1000′s of social media accounts which are easily spotted.
They will attack en mass to lessen damage to verruca.
@tommytukamomo: “1,000s of social media accounts”. Really?
@Chin Feeyin: ‘social media is irrelevant. Old people don’t read social media’
Really???
@Frank Cauldhame: dismissing information as fraudulent because it doesn’t suit you is hardly mature debate. The poorly informed representing as the enlightened
@Frank Cauldhame: Just because someone says that Leo will get back in doesn’t make them a FG apologist it just makes them a realist.
Rearranging the deckchairs on the titanic.
@tommytukamomo:
Do you think the government is at risk?
@Tweety McTweeter: Hopefully, but the same old sows & swine want to keep their snouts in the trough.
@tommytukamomo: more like lining up some more of his chums for a ministerial pension !! move a few on -those that have enough ‘service’ to claim a ministerial top up to their pension -and give some new faces a chance to boost their pension by a few grand a year !!
Housing and health about to receive a new 5 or 10 year plan.. FFG way…
@Willy Mc Caul: another 5 point plan
@tommytukamomo: five year ,plan ,duck, dive, dodge , denounce, and of course delude !
@Willy Mc Caul: Yes like the constantly wheeled out metro north nonsence? In the time they have been messing about with metro north London Has finished the dock lands light rail and the jubilee line and crossrail. In the and time 25 cities in China have completed full urban metro systems. The Spanish built a fabulous high speed rail systems. We’re still taking about a single short metro line for decades
@Gerard Heery: Now that’s definitely the FFG five year plan!
Election time sockboy
Shuffle the whole government!
Harris and Murphy about to get reassigned no doubt and the Irish media will, as always, ignore their disastrous failure.
They’ll both make a fine Taoiseach one day.
Oh no. Does that mean Shane Ross could be deployed to ruin a different area of our lives? Perhaps they could just make him the minister for making the tea at cabinet meetings?
@Conor Phillips: Lord Ross doesn’t make tea.. He has a boy for that… “Boy, fetch me my tea!”
@Conor Phillips:
I agree he’s got to be the worst Minister ever! Has ruined numerous industries with his policies.
This is so a lad thats not qualified for his brief can get a role where he’s not qualified for his brief..Sure what can possibly go wrong!!!!!
I reshuffle won’t mean much to anyone except themselves, with this incompetent bunch.
Another smug smarmy photo of this obnoxious tool.
@Adrian:Self satisfied smirk on his face
@Adrian: a tool has a use. However limited, but still has a use..
The minister for everything is as useful as a handbrake on a toilet seat.
This country is a society as well as an economy and it is people who vote for politicians not companies,etc.We hear from politicians many times on a daily basis on a variety of issues but with National emergencies in homelessness, housing and health,etc affecting our society,it’s time for politicians to really listen&it’s time for straight talking not spin,not divide &conquer and not excuses and it’s time for ALL sections of society to really feel that they matter&that the power really comes from the people!
Leo needs a boot up the backside himself
Replacing useless f”"kers with other useless f”"kers
Pass the buck time. No responsibility.
Politics, the art of the impossible, with our current totally inept useless bunch bringing new meaning to this self gratifying phrase, finding more things impossible than most.
Hopefully this clown will be first
I hope fine gael get re-elected
@Billy Davies: That’s nice, I hope they don’t.
Send Ross somewhere…
Anywhere.
Hope he gets rid of Shane Ross, when did anybody cause an accident with 50mg of Alcohol on board? Probably never!!
@Maire: Fond of a drink and a bit of driving? Hope you get busted
@Barra O Brien: Sorry, Dara, I don’t drink and Drive!
Yea abdication of the little responsibility there is.
That won’t change anything, not even their underwear?
Please god he sees sense and gets rid of that clown Shane Ross
C
Coveney would be a far better Taoiseach,
I’m sick of sock boy!
have your say