Cyclone Idai: Hundreds feared dead as tropical storm batters Zimbabwe and Mozambique

Damage is seen after Tropical Cyclone Idai, in Beira, Mozambique (AP)

At least 157 people have been killed by a cyclone that has flooded land and destroyed roads across Zimbabwe and Mozambique, as officials admit the death toll could be significantly higher.

Cyclone Idai has caused huge damage to the port city of Beira, Mozambique’s second largest port which is home to around 500,000 people.

The cyclone made landfall in Mozambique on Thursday evening, with winds of up to 177 km/h and heavy rain.

Jamie LeSueur, leader of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies team in Beira, said: “The scale of devastation is enormous. It seems that 90 per cent of the area is completely destroyed.”

Nick Mangwana, the Zimbabwean information ministry official, said the number of confirmed deaths in Zimbabwe is 89, and that number is expected to rise.

Mozambique’s state news agency said Beira’s death toll is 68, and according to television channel TVM 84 people have died across the country.

In Zimbabwe the Chimanimani district has been cut off from the rest of the country, with many people forced to sleep in the mountains since Friday because their homes had been flattened by rock falls and mudslides, or washed away from the rain.

The intense rainfall has also prevented people from burying the dead.

Zimbabwe has been suffering from a severe, crop-wilting drought, and a United Nations humanitarian agency has said 5.3 million of the country’s 15 million people will need food aid.

According to the World Food Programme, teams are in Zimbabwe, Mozambique and Malawi, planning to target food assistance to 650,000 in Malawi and 600,000 in Mozambique, and will be able to scale up the response with more food distribution in the coming days.

They said at least 1.7 million people were affected and in the cyclone’s direct path in Mozambique, as well as 920,000 in Malawi.

Mozambique’s President Filipe Nyusi says more than 1,000 people may have been killed, despite the official death count of 84.

The Zimbabwe Red Cross Society has put out a Facebook appeal for help with clothing, shelter, blankets, medical supplies and food.

The storm is the worst that Zimbabwe has had since Cyclone Eline in 2000, which destroyed land across eastern and southern Zimbabwe, and affected Mozambique at a time when it had been hit by its worst floods in three decades, killing 350 people and making 650,000 people homeless.