SUSAN NJANJI, Maputo | Sunday 6.10pm
HEAVY rains fell in the centre and north of flood-stricken Mozambique on Sunday and are expected to intensify, weather experts said.
“There will not be much rain in the south, but the centre and north are expected to see rains intensifying over the next 48 hours,” meteorologist Americo Leonardo said.
State radio reported that the Zambezi River running through the centre of the country is continuing to rise.
About 1500 people living along the river banks have been evacuated to higher ground, it said, adding that the river has been raised by the opening of floodgates on the vast Kariba Dam on the Zimbabwe-Zambia border. The government’s disaster management institute has warned displaced people not to return home because of the forecasts.
Meanwhile, the official death toll from the country’s worst natural disaster in living memory rose to 354 on Saturday. The worst-hit province was Gaza, in the south, where 285 people have died including 175 in the town of Chokwe, provincial governor Eugenio Numaio told state radio.
However, President Joaquim Chissano and Unicef have already warned that the final toll could be in the thousands. Meanwhile, Zimbabwe’s Health Minister Timothy Stamps, warned that more than 10 million people across southern Africa were at risk from malaria, cholera, dysentry and meningitis epidemics, caused by the flooding and Cyclone Eline, which also hit Botswana, Swaziland, South Africa and Zimbabwe.
“The toll will be many hundreds of times the number of people who died as a result of flooding,” Stamps told journalists after emergency talks with ministers of the five countries in the Mozambican capital.
In Mozambique, worst hit by the floods, international relief efforts in the south picked up pace after the easing of rains that had heaped more misery on tens of thousands of survivors.– AFP