Thousands Of People Estimated Dead Due To Typhoon Chido Hits French Mayotte
JAKARTA - Thousands of people are thought to have died from Typhoon Chido hitting the Mayotte Islands, France, Sunday, December 15 evening.
Local authority official Francois-Xavier Bieuville said the typhoon was the strongest to hit the Mayotte in nearly a century.
"I think there will definitely be a few hundred, maybe a thousand, even a few thousand," the local media channel Mayotte La 1ere said on Sunday.
The French Ministry of Home Affairs said that until now it has not been able to explain the exact number of victims due to Typhoon Chido. They are still collecting data regarding this matter.
France's national meteorological agency Meteo-France said Typhoon Chido with wind speeds of more than 200 kph (124 mph) damaged housing, government buildings, and hospitals.
According to Meteo-France, the typhoon has been the strongest hurricane in more than 90 years hitting the archipelago
"To be honest, what we're going through is tragedy, you feel like you're in the middle of a nuclear war... I see the whole environment disappear," a Mamoudzoud resident of the Mayotte region, Mohamed Ishmael, told Reuters by telephone.
Video footage from French police air monitoring shows hundreds of emergency refugee buildings housing illegal immigrants from the Comoro collapsed in the hills of one of the islands of Mayotte.
Meanwhile, local media published images showing a mother pushing for newborn beds along the corridors of the flooded Mayotte hospital.
Not far from there, the police boat was seen overturned on the beach. Meanwhile, many coconut trees collapsed on the roof of the building.
"My thoughts are with our compatriots at the Mayotte, who have gone through the most terrible hours, and who, for some, have lost everything, lost their lives," said French President Emmanuel Macron.
In recent decades, the Mayotte has been the destination of thousands of illegal immigrants in the Eastern African state, Komoro.
According to the French Ministry of Home Affairs, more than 100,000 undocumented migrants from the Comoro were accommodated at the Mayotte.