A tropical storm has swept through parts of eastern Zimbabwe leaving many dead.
Cyclone Idai destroyed many houses and swept away bridges in Manicaland province on the border with Mozambique.
The Zimbabwe’s ministry of information announced on Twitter that the “number of deaths is confirmed at 24. The storm also cut off power and communications in parts of Manicaland province.
CYCLONE IDAI UPDATES
Number of deaths is confirmed at 24 mainly from Chimanimani East #CycloneIdai— Ministry of Information, Publicity & Broadcasting (@InfoMinZW) March 16, 2019
Flooding, which started before the storm had already killed nearly 70 people.
The storm hit Zimbabwe with winds of up to 177km/h (106 mph) and has affected more than 500,000 residents in the port city of Beira. Roads in the city were flooded and the airport was shut down.
Serious humanitarian crisis unfolding in chimanimani chipinge most of our structures comms are down.We need state intervention on a massive scale to avoid biblical disaster ,homes bridges being washed away lives in danger @hwendec @daddyhop@kwirirayi @nelsonchamisa @mdczimbabwe pic.twitter.com/QSVEe7yiG7
— Mayor of Harare, Jacob Mafume (@JMafume) March 16, 2019
Idai made landfall in Mozambique on Thursday and has so far killed 19 people in the country.
This isn’t the first time that Mozambique would be stuck by cyclone. In 2000, a cyclone, Eline killed 350 people and displaced 650,000.
