Hundreds feared dead after cyclone hits Mayotte

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Senior officials on Sunday said the death toll from Cyclone Chido's passage across Mayotte would be in the hundreds, perhaps even thousands, as France rushed rescue workers and supplies to the French island territory off Mozambique. Their efforts will be hindered by the damage to airports and electricity distribution. 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. It would be "very difficult to reach a final count" given that most residents are Muslim, traditionally burying their dead within 24 hours, Bieuville added. EU chief Ursula von der Leyen on Sunday pledged help from the bloc. "Our hearts go out to France following the devastating passage of Cyclone Chido through Mayotte," she posted on the social media platform X. "We are ready to provide support in the days to come." WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus also offered support, writing on X that his organisation "stands ready to support communities in need of essential health care". Earlier on Sunday, the mayor of Mayotte's capital Mamoudzou, Ambdilwahedou Soumaila, told AFP nine were in a critical condition in hospital, with another 246 more 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. The cyclone wiped out makeshift housing in the archipelago's shantytown, France's Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau said late on Saturday. Mayotte's 320,000 residents were ordered into lockdown on Saturday as Cyclone Chido bore down on the islands around 500 kilometres east of Mozambique, with gusts of at least 226 kilometres per hour. Already Sunday, medical personnel and equipment were delivered Sunday by air and sea. The prefecture in La Reunion, another French Indian Ocean territory some 1,400 kilometres away on the other side of Madagascar, said a first aid plane had landed in Mayotte. It carried three tonnes of medical supplies, blood for transfusions and 17 medical staff, authorities in La Reunion said, with two military aircraft expected to follow. 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 made in Mozambique landfall early Sunday around 40 kilometres south of the northern city of Pemba, weather services said. The death toll there so far stands at three, said local officials. Unicef said it was on the ground in Mozambique to help the people hit by the storm. Cyclone Chido is the latest in a string of storms worldwide fuelled by climate change, according to experts. The "exceptional" cyclone was super-charged by particularly warm Indian Ocean waters, meteorologist Francois Gourand of the Meteo France weather service told reporters. (AFP)