Cyclone Chido devastated Mayotte: Hundreds of dead fear!

Cyclone Chido devastated Mayotte: Hundreds of dead fear!

A disaster of unimaginable extent has hit the French island of Mayotte! The devastating cyclone Chido, who has brought the strongest winds with over 200 km/h for almost a century, shaked the region in the night from Saturday to Sunday. According to the high-ranking French officer Francois Xavier Bieuville, the number of fatalities could go into the hundreds, if not in thousands. "I think we will certainly reach several hundred, maybe even a thousand," he said in an interview with the local broadcaster Mayotte la 1ere.

The French Interior Minister has already warned that it will be "difficult to grasp all victims", and an exact number cannot be mentioned at this time. The destruction is enormous: residential buildings, government buildings and even a hospital were badly damaged. The people in Mayotte are faced with a humanitarian crisis because access to food, water and sanitary facilities is severely restricted.

a picture of horror

"What we experience is a tragedy. It feels like you woke up after a nuclear war ... I saw how an entire neighborhood disappeared," reported the resident of Mamoudzou, Mohamed Ishmael, shaken in an interview with the Reuters news agency. The island, which is almost 8,000 km from Paris, is not only geographically isolated, but also fights with extreme poverty. Over three quarters of the population live below the French poverty border, and social tensions have increased by water shortages in recent years.

The situation is complicated by the presence of more than 100,000 undocumented migrants who live in this region. The authorities face the challenge of determining the exact number of fatalities, while the emergency of the population is becoming increasingly pressing. The French government has already set up an air bridge from the island of Réunion to provide help.

political challenges

This catastrophe is also a first major challenge for the new Prime Minister Francois Bayrou, who was appointed a few days ago by President Emmanuel Macron after the previous government failed. While the island of Mayotte is suffering from the consequences of the cyclone, the storm has also reached the north of Mozambique, where the effects are still unclear. Two people were slightly injured in the comors, 24 people became homeless, and 21 houses were destroyed.

The story of Mayotte is characterized by colonial past and political turbulence. France annexed the island in 1904, and although a referendum from 1974 showed a majority for the independence of the comors, the people in Mayotte decided to remain French. The region has shaped this complex history to this day and makes the current crisis even more tragic.