Wed 27 January 2021:
Eloise brought winds of up to 150km/h followed by torrential rain over port city of Beira and adjacent Buzi district.
A tropical cyclone that struck central Mozambique last week has affected 250,000 people, a sharp increase over initial estimates, according to a UN official.
Myrta Kaulard, the UN’s resident coordinator in Mozambique, added on Tuesday that 18,000 people were internally displaced after Cyclone Eloise made landfall in the early hours of Saturday.
“We also see widespread floods that are still there and a lot of people trying still to get out of the flooded areas,” she said.
It weakened into a tropical storm as it moved inland to Zimbabwe, South Africa, eSwatini, formerly known as Swaziland and Botswana.
In Mozambique, the cyclone hit an area already devastated by two successive super-storms in March and April 2019.
The first, Cyclone Idai, left more than 1,000 dead and caused damage estimated at about $2bn.
An international aid group warned on Tuesday that crowded centres for storm survivors created ideal conditions for the coronavirus to spread.
In the port city of Beira alone, 8,700 people are living in 16 temporary shelters after their homes were destroyed by the cyclone.
“This was not a planned evacuation … this was running for your life,” he said.
