Over 1,000 people were feared dead in Mozambique four days after a cyclone made landfall near the port city of Beira, submerging entire villages and leaving bodies floating in the floodwaters.
“It is a real disaster of great proportions,” President Filipe Nyusi said.
Cyclone Idai could prove to be the deadliest storm in generations to hit the impoverished southeast African country of nearly 30 million people.
It struck Beira late on Thursday and then moved inland to Zimbabwe and Malawi with strong winds and heavy rain. It took days for the scope of the disaster to come into focus in Mozambique.