The death toll from Cyclone Freddy, which dissipated in mid-March after massive flooding and landslides in southern Africa, could top 1,200 in Malawi as hopes of survivors dwindle, the state said on Thursday. police and authorities.
The cyclone killed at least 676 people in Malawi, the epicenter of the disaster. And the country’s disaster management department says the chances of finding the 538 missing, more than two weeks after the disaster, have become woefully slim.
Search operations with sniffer dogs are continuing in places, its manager Charles Kalemba explained on Wednesday, but more in hard-hit Blantyre, “the team on the ground having informed us that they had done their best”.
“Given the number of days that have passed, the chances of finding people alive are slim, so we will wait for the police to declare when we can consider the missing people dead,” he said.
This decision is still premature, police spokesman Harry Namwaza told AFP on Thursday. “The police and the army are continuing the search. When we have completed this process, the time will come to declare the missing to be presumed dead.”
He did not advance on the foreseeable duration of this research. “It’s hard to say because we are still reaching some places that were previously inaccessible. There is still work to be done,” he added.
Formed in early February off Australia, the exceptionally long-lasting cyclone made an unprecedented crossing of more than 8,000 km from east to west in the Indian Ocean. It followed a looping path rarely recorded by meteorologists, hitting Madagascar and Mozambique for the first time at the end of February, then again in March these two countries and Malawi.
In addition to the heavy toll in Malawi, Freddy also killed 165 people in Mozambique and 17 others in Madagascar, according to the UN.