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Cyclone Idai: Devastation in Mozambique and Zimbabwe | |
(about 2 hours later) | |
Cyclone Idai has had a "massive and horrifying" impact on Mozambique's port city of Beira, the Red Cross says. | Cyclone Idai has had a "massive and horrifying" impact on Mozambique's port city of Beira, the Red Cross says. |
It made landfall on Thursday with winds of up to 177 km/h (106 mph), but aid teams only reached Beira on Sunday. | It made landfall on Thursday with winds of up to 177 km/h (106 mph), but aid teams only reached Beira on Sunday. |
People have been rescued from trees, homes have been destroyed and roofs were ripped off concrete buildings, head of the Red Cross assessment team, Jamie LeSeur, told the BBC. | |
The cyclone has killed at least 150 people across southern Africa. | |
More than 80 people have died in eastern and southern Zimbabwe, information ministry head Nick Mangwana told Reuters news agency. | |
This includes two boarding school pupils in the district of Chimanimani, who died after their dormitory was hit when rocks swept down a mountain. | |
At least 68 people have died in Mozambique, mostly around Beira, the authorities there say. | |
Malawi has also been badly hit. The flooding there, caused by the rains before the cyclone made landfall, led to at least 122 deaths, Reliefweb reports. | |
Local people in Beira, with a population of 500,000, have put in an "incredible effort" to reopen roads in the city, Mr LeSeur told the BBC's Newsday programme. | |
"Beira has been severely battered. But we are hearing that the situation outside the city could be even worse," a statement from the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Society quotes him as saying. |