The death toll rises to 20 and to 55,000 displaced by the passage of Cyclone Batsirai from Madagascar, according to the latest report from the authorities.
Floods before completing its passage through Madagascar this morning have destroyed the country’s largest rice fields in the center of the island, raising fears of a worsening humanitarian situation, Unicef ​​has warned.
“Batsirai left Madagascar this morning at 07:00 (06:00 Greek time) for the Gulf of Mozambique,” said Jean Benoit Manes, UNICEF Deputy Representative in Madagascar. According to the latest report released by the Office of Risk and Disaster Management, 20 people lost their lives and 55,000 fled their homes.
The tropical cyclone arrived in Madagascar late Saturday night off the east coast of the large Indian Ocean island, accompanied by heavy rains and winds of up to 165 kilometers per hour, before hitting the French coast. Unicef ​​fears that many of the victims are children as they represent more than 50% of the country’s population.
The cyclone first hit a sparsely populated 150-kilometer rural coastal zone before heading west inland, causing rivers to overflow and flooding that destroyed Madagascar’s largest rice paddies in the central part of the country, according to Unicef.
“The effects of the cyclone are not ending today, they will last for several months, mainly in the agricultural sector,” Manes warned. One of the poorest countries in the world, Madagascar was already hit a month ago by the deadly tropical storm Ana, which killed 55 people on the island and affected tens of thousands of people.
The capital, Antananarivo, and the country’s main port, Toamasina, in the northeastern part of the country, this time escaped the cyclone, which explains the report that falls short of what the authorities and non-governmental organizations, who relied on 500,000 those who would be affected and 140,000 those displaced.
“The roofs of hundreds of schools and health centers have been swept away” by the winds in the affected areas, Unicef ​​said, adding that the death toll remains high on the island, where 77% of the population lives below the poverty line. and the southern part of which is affected by severe drought that has plunged more than a million people into acute malnutrition and some pockets of famine.
Cyclone Batsirai partially destroyed the main highway connecting the north with the south of the island, “which will make it difficult to access and strengthen some villages, including drought zones,” warned Jean-Benoit. Manes, stressing that “Madagascar is in a constant humanitarian crisis.”
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