The devastating cyclone that has ripped through southern Africa after making landfall for a rare second time has killed at least 246 people in Malawi and Mozambique since Saturday night — and the death toll is expected to rise.
Tropical Cyclone Freddy, which brewed off Australia and traversed the Indian Ocean, delivered another punch to south-eastern Africa on the weekend when it made landfall for the second time since late February.
Heavy rains that triggered floods and mudslides killed 225 people in Malawi, authorities said on Wednesday, with another 707 injured and 41 missing.
In neighbouring Mozambique, authorities reported at least 21 deaths.
Rescue workers scouring destroyed neighbourhoods for survivors even as hopes dwindled warned there were likely to be more victims found.
Malawi President Lazarus Chakwera declared a "state of disaster" in his country's southern region and the now-ravaged commercial capital, Blantyre.
"The situation is very dire," said Guilherme Botelho, emergency project coordinator for Doctors Without Borders (MSF) in Malawi.
"There are many casualties, either wounded, missing or dead, and the numbers will only increase in the coming days."
Across the country, nearly 59,000 people have been affected and more than 19,000 displaced, with many now sheltering in schools and churches.
Malawi Minister of Local Government Richard Chimwendo Banda said the damage caused by the cyclone had been hampering efforts to help those in need.
Human rights group Amnesty International called on the international community to mobilise resources and boost aid and rescue efforts in the two countries.
Relief efforts are strained in the nations, which were already battling a cholera outbreak when the cyclone struck.
Reports from Mozambique's disaster institute confirmed on Tuesday that 1,900 homes had been destroyed in the coastal Zambezia province.
Tens of thousands of people are still holed up in storm shelters and accommodation centres.
The UN's meteorological centre on the island of Réunion predicted Tropical Cyclone Freddy would continue to thump central Mozambique and southern Malawi with extreme rainfall before it heads back to sea late on Wednesday afternoon.
The cyclone has been causing destruction in southern Africa since late February.
It also pummelled the island states of Madagascar and Réunion last month as it traversed across the Indian Ocean.
'We feel helpless'
In Chilobwe, a township outside Blantyre, stunned survivors surveyed flattened houses and other structures as rain continued to fall.
Aged in his 80s and dressed in a raincoat and woollen hat, John Witman stood with his 10 family members in front of what had been his son-in-law's home.
It was now just rocks and gushing water, with the house having been swept away.
"I wish that we could find him (Mr Witman's son-in-law) and find closure," he said.
"We feel helpless because no-one is here to help us."
In Chimwankhunda, a few kilometres away, Steve Panganani Matera, wearing a high-visibility green jacket, pointed to a mound of mud.
"There were plenty of houses, but they are all gone," Mr Matera said. "There are plenty of bodies down there in the mud."
Fourteen-year-old Mayeso Chinthenga said his family's house was taken by the cascading mud.
"We were out looking for firewood when we saw rocks rolling down the mountain, so we ran for safety," he said.
"Some of our neighbours died on the spot."
Mr Chakwera, who returned to Malawi on Tuesday after attending a United Nations conference in Qatar, hailed the relief efforts by volunteers.
"We have arrived to a devastated nation," he said in a statement.
Longest-lasting tropical cyclone on record
Tropical Cyclone Freddy reached landlocked Malawi early on Monday morning after sweeping through Mozambique at the weekend.
The storm has unofficially broken the World Meteorological Organisation's benchmark as the longest-lasting tropical cyclone on record.
The last record was set in 1994 for a 31-day storm named John.
Freddy became a named storm on February 6, making landfall in Madagascar on February 21 and sweeping over the island before reaching Mozambique on February 24, claiming nearly two dozen lives in both countries and affecting nearly 400,000 people.
It then returned to the Indian Ocean and gathered new energy over its warm waters, then reversed course to come back much more powerful at the weekend, packing wind gusts of up to 200 kilometres per hour, according to Emmanuel Cloppet of the Meteo-France weather service.
Meteorologists say cyclones that track across the entire Indian Ocean are very infrequent — with the last doing so in 2000 — and that Freddy's loopback was even more exceptional.
"It's a very rare thing that these cyclones feed themselves over and over again," said climate expert Coleen Vogel at South Africa's University of the Witwatersrand.
ABC/wires
