American Marconi Wireless News - Madagascar cyclone death toll rises to 40, water, power still out

In its latest update Friday, the National Office for Risk and Disaster Management (BNRGC) said 40 people had been killed and 427 people injured, as one aid worker spoke of "apocalyptic" scenes on the Indian Ocean island.

Six people were still missing and the cyclone had affected 273,417 people -- or 74,393 households, the BNRGC added.

After visiting the island's second-largest city of Toamasina, which bore the brunt of Gezani's 250-kilometre-per-hour (155-mile-per-hour) winds, the World Food Programme's Madagascar director Tania Goosens told journalists that "the scale of destruction is overwhelming".

"The authorities have reported that 80 percent of the city has been damaged," she added.

"The city is running on roughly five percent of electricity and there is no water," she said, adding that the WFP's office and one warehouse "were also completely destroyed".

AFP photos showed the scale of the destruction, with trees and sheets of metal scattered across the streets, hampering recovery efforts.

"A lot of zones are still inaccessible to rescue workers," one aid worker told AFP. "Bridges are down, roads are destroyed. It's really terrible."

The situation was even worse beyond Toamasina, he added. "In the outlying towns, in rural areas, it's apocalyptic."

China has offered 100 million yuan (about $14.5 million) in aid, Madagascar's presidency announced.

On Thursday, France said it was sending food and rescue teams from the French island of La Reunion after Madagascar's new leader, Colonel Michael Randrianirina, called for "international solidarity".

Fears that the full force of Cyclone Gezani would be unleashed on southern Mozambique -- already hit by devastating floods this year -- faded after meteorologists at the CMRS on the French island of La Reunion downplayed that prospect.

It would instead brush the coast of Mozambique to the west, they said, bringing heavy rainfall and strong winds to the Mozambican coastal city of Inhambane and the tourist resort of Tofo.

Officials in Inhambane called on those of the city's 100,000 residents living in makeshift housing to evacuate to a safer place.

L.Durand--AMWN