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full screen A village on one of Mayotte’s islands in February 2021. Now many villages like this have been ravaged by a serious cyclone. Photo: Sony Ibrahim Chamsidine/AP/TT
At least ten people have died when a cyclone swept through and caused enormous destruction on the French island group of Mayotte. Now the storm is thundering in over the coast of Africa.
The authorities in Mayotte expressed early fears that many people have been killed. A source tells AFP that 14 people have been found dead. Officially, eleven deaths have been reported so far.
Images in the French media show how neighborhoods built as shantytowns have been razed to the ground. All the particularly vulnerable buildings – with close-standing tin sheds – have been destroyed, according to the French prefect’s crisis staff.
“There is no longer anything left,” the staff announced, according to Mayotte la 1ère, a local branch of France’s public service media.
More than 250 people have been taken to hospital.
Mayotte is an island group located off the east coast of Africa, northwest of Madagascar. The islands have been ruled by France since the mid-19th century and are the country’s poorest region.
The cyclone, which has been named Chido, has continued west and reached the coast of Mozambique on Sunday morning.
“Many homes, schools and healthcare facilities have been partially or completely destroyed,” reports the UN aid agency Unicef.