Mozambique's death toll from Cyclone Chido rose to 73 on December 19 as officials continued to assess damage from one of the strongest storms to hit the country's north in recent years.
The National Institute of Risk and Disaster Management said 66 of the deaths were in Cabo Delgado province, where the cyclone made landfall on Sunday. Four people were killed in Nampula province and three in Niassa, farther inland, while one person remained missing. More than 540 people were reported injured.
The scale of the disaster extended well beyond the fatalities. The disaster centre said more than 39,100 homes were destroyed and more than 13,400 others were partially destroyed. More than 329,500 people were affected across northern Mozambique.
Cyclone Chido brought winds of about 260km/h and dumped roughly 250mm of rain in 24 hours, according to the same official tally. The storm hit a region that is already highly exposed to cyclones and where conflict and underdevelopment have left many communities with limited resilience.
UNICEF's Mozambique spokesman Guy Taylor described conditions in wide parts of the north as devastation and said many families had already lost everything before the cyclone arrived. He said the country already had 3.4 million children in need of humanitarian assistance, adding that people now needed shelter after villages were flattened.
The storm did not stop at Mozambique. After sweeping through the country it moved into Malawi, where it killed 13 people and injured dozens, according to disaster officials there. In the French overseas territory of Mayotte, authorities were still warning that the final toll could be far higher than the official count available at the time of reporting.
For Mozambique, the immediate picture on December 19 was one of widening humanitarian need. Rescue and relief teams were dealing with damaged homes, missing residents, injured survivors and broken infrastructure across a broad stretch of the north. The official figures showed that the cyclone's human cost was concentrated in Cabo Delgado, but its destruction was spread across multiple provinces and hundreds of thousands of people.
The event also underscored how quickly a major cyclone can compound existing vulnerability. Even before Chido, northern Mozambique had faced chronic displacement, weak services and repeated weather shocks. The storm added a fresh emergency on top of those conditions, and the response challenge now extended from emergency shelter to food, water, and medical support for displaced families.
