The death toll from Cyclone Batsirai, which left Madagascar on Monday morning, has risen to 30, according to an updated count from authorities, and could rise further as bodies continue to be found in the rubble of collapsed houses, IgbereTV reports.
On Wednesday morning, Madagascar’s disaster management agency (BNGRC) announced that the number of dead on the Indian Ocean island had risen from 21 to 30 the previous evening. The BNGRC said that 94,000 people were victims of Batsirai with 60,000 now homeless.
Many NGOs and UN agencies have begun to deploy resources and teams to help the victims of the cyclone which brought heavy rain and winds of 165 kilometres (102 miles) per hour.
The tropical cyclone hit Madagascar overnight from Saturday to Sunday, on a 150-km-long, sparsely populated and agricultural eastern coastal area.
As the cyclone moved inland it caused flooding that ravaged rice fields in the country’s central “breadbasket”, raising fears of a humanitarian crisis.
German experts have arrived in the country, one of the poorest on the planet, to “support the humanitarian response in the Batsirai passage areas”, said the BNGRC, and work is underway on the 20 roads and the 17 bridges that were cut, isolating villages
