Gafilo death toll 58, more missing

[senorpepr]

At least 58 people were killed and 167 listed as missing after a tropical cyclone that hit Madagascar twice since last weekend, state radio said on Friday.

The radio on the Indian Ocean island said the missing list still included the crew and passengers of a ferry carrying 113 people when it capsized in mountainous seas.

Maritime officials said on Thursday only two people were believed to have survived the sinking of the ferry, nicknamed Samson.

The two, from the neighbouring Comoro Islands, told Madagascan marine officials they believed eight children were among those aboard when Samson sank on its way from the Comoran island of Anjouan to Madagascar's second port of Mahajanga.

Cyclone Gafilo has destroyed the homes of more than 120,000 people, the radio said.

"Following the heavy rains which have accompanied the cyclone, water levels everywhere are rising dangerously and risk major flooding," the national weather office said.

Foreign Minister Marcel Ranjeva has appealed for international help for the vanilla-producing island and his ministry said humanitarian aid from France, Libya and the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) had started to arrive.

The toll included people who drowned after being swept away by sudden floods when rivers burst their banks. The storm rampaged across the northern part of the island, destroying buildings, uprooting trees and flooding towns before heading back out to sea.

The Comoros government has declared a period of national mourning until midnight on Saturday.

The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) operation in Johannesburg said it had dispatched an emergency team to Madagascar to coordinate relief efforts, and had given $50,000 to help the victims.

The statement said UNICEF had released $300,000 from its emergency resources and would ship jerry cans, tents, soap, blankets, water purifiers and supplementary food for children.

Barbara Bentein, UNICEF's Madagascar representative said the fund had flown in 36 tonnes of emergency supplies.

Mike Huggins, regional spokesman for the U.N.'s World Food Programme, said that WFP had moved 200 tonnes of rice and 60 tonnes of high-energy corn-soya blend in the past two days to the northeast, where the cyclone first hit.