The death toll from Cyclone Batsirai, which left Madagascar on Monday morning, has risen to 30 and could rise further as bodies continue to be found in the rubble of collapsed houses.
On Wednesday morning, Madagascar’s disaster management agency
announced that the number of dead on the Indian Ocean island had risen
from 21 to 30 the previous evening, saying that 94,000 people were
victims of the cyclone with 60,000 now homeless.
The tropical cyclone hit Madagascar overnight from Saturday to Sunday,
on a 150-km-long, sparsely populated and agricultural eastern coastal
area.
Some 77 percent of Madagascar’s 28 million people live below the
poverty line, and the latest blow comes during a severe drought in the
south which has plunged more than a million people into acute
malnutrition, some facing famine.
Madagascar was still picking up the pieces after Tropical Storm Ana
affected at least 131,000 people across the island late last month, with
most of the 55 deaths occurring in Antananarivo.
Tropical Storm Ana also hit Malawi, Mozambique and Zimbabwe,
causing dozens of deaths.
