BLANTYRE (Reuters) – To help in search and rescue efforts, foreign aircraft and boats are arriving in Malawi, where entire villages were swept away by floods after a storm tore through its southern districts, officials said on Friday.
The storm has pounded the southern African country as tropical Cyclone Freddy swept through the region killing more than 400 people in Malawi, Mozambique and Madagascar since it first made landfall in Africa in late February and circled back to hit the region for a second time over the weekend.
While the storm has now dissipated, rain continued to hamper rescue efforts as vehicles were not able to pass through flooded roads.
Malawi’s police inspector, Casper Chalera, told Reuters by telephone that the first rescue vessels will arrive from Zambia and Switzerland, adding that the U.S. and South Africa were also planning to send aid aircraft and boats.
“Two Zambian planes, one carrying relief items and a helicopter for aerial operations have landed,” Chalera said.
Lameck Kalenga, Defence Force Deputy Chief of military operations, told media on Thursday that the United Kingdom and Mozambique had also pledged to send military equipment.
The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) said it was providing food assistance by distributing partially pre-cooked food called corn-soya blend to displaced people.
“(Severe flooding) has inundated farmlands and destroyed produce – just as farmers were about to harvest the only crop of the year – compounding an already difficult year in which 3.8 million people need food assistance,” the WFP said in a statement.
It added that the country has been affected by high maize prices and the worst cholera epidemic in decades.
At least 76 people have died in Mozambique and 326 in Malawi since the weekend, according to government figures. The storm had already killed about 27 people in Madagascar and Mozambique before it lashed Mozambique a second time.
(Reporting by Frank Phiri in Blantyre and Manuel Mucari in Maputo; Writing by Anait Miridzhanian; Editing by Aurora Ellis)
