Over 200 people missing in Zim village after cyclone destruction

CHIMANIMANI – Over 200 people are missing in the village of Kopa in Zimbabwe’s Chimanimani District after the destruction of Cyclone Idai.

The cyclone hit eastern Zimbabwe two weeks ago.

The cyclone brought an unthinkable amount of water, mud and boulders down, pulverising the village.

The Gift of the Givers Team, along with four sniffer dogs and search and rescue technicians is being helicoptered into the area where at least 39 schoolchildren and the school principal’s bodies remain missing.

In neighbouring Mozambique, thousands of people were trapped for more than a week in submerged villages without access to clean water after Cyclone Idai smashed into the Mozambican port city of Beira on 14 March, causing catastrophic flooding and killing more than 700 people across three countries in southeast Africa.

With tens of thousands of displaced people moved to makeshift camps, relief efforts have increasingly focused on containing outbreaks of waterborne and infectious diseases.

In nearby Malawi, which was badly hit by flooding and heavy rains in the leadup to Cyclone Idai, the government said arable and livestock farming had been badly affected and that irrigation infrastructure had been damaged.

Impoverished Malawi is regularly hit by food shortages, so the damage to the country’s staple grain is a cause for concern.

eNCA reporter Michael Appel and cameraman Linge Ndabambi have more details in the video above.

– Additional reporting by AFP