Survivors scared to return after Mozambique floods

“I am afraid to go back home, it’s dangerous, the floods,” said Bennetu Ngonyama, a peasant farmer. Ngonyama and Antonio Chitiva said some of their friends had to compete for space in trees with dangerous snakes which were also fleeing the rising waters. Some 100,000 Mozambicans can tell similar tales.

A South African Pilot, Captain Karl Kebert, also told reporters that people were sharing trees with snakes. Kebert, who works for a South African charter company, said he was flying in emergency supplies to marooned people and where possible picking up the vulnerable ones.

While waters have been receding in some parts, in the worst affected areas of Xai Xai and Chibuto, the water levels reportedly rose by about half a metre on Thursday. Lieutenant Colonel Jaco Klopper of the South African National Defence Forces said their reconnaisance teams which flew across the flood-affected regions said the water was rising because it was blocked from entering the sea.

Over the past three weeks that floods have ravaged the impoverished southern African country, the South African airforce had rescued 10,925 Mozambicans, with 8,111 of them plucked from rooftops and trees since Monday, Klopper said. Mozambique estimates that about a million people have been affected by the floods.

More emergency rescue teams and equipment are on their way to Mozambique from various parts of the world, including 900 US military personnel, amid accusations that the relief operation was slow getting off the ground.