Sadly President Filipe Nyusi feared the death toll could rise to 1,000 in Mozambique in the wake of Cyclone Idai he said in a nationwide address on Monday.
“For the moment we have registered 84 deaths officially, but when we flew over the area … this morning to understand what’s going on, everything indicates that we could register more than 1,000 deaths,” he said.
It made landfall close to the port city of Beira on Thursday with winds of up to 177 km/h (106 mph), but aid teams only reached the city on Sunday.
The official death toll stands at 84 following flooding and high winds, which have destroyed homes and ripped roofs from concrete buildings.
The cyclone has killed at least 160 people across southern Africa.
On a visit to Beira, President Nyusi said that its impact had been devastating, adding that he had seen bodies floating in the floodwater.
Earlier, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Society (IFRC) described it as “massive and horrifying”