Cyclone Batsirai killed at least six people and displaced nearly 48,000 when it struck Madagascar overnight, the national disaster management agency said on Sunday.
Cyclone Batsirai weakened overnight but not before wreaking havoc in the poor Indian Ocean island nation which is still reeling from a deadly tropical storm earlier this year.
The eastern district of Mananjary was lashed with heavy rains and wind before the cyclone made landfall, forcing local residents to weigh down flimsy corrugated iron roofs, an AFP correspondent saw.
The rain will cause flooding across parts of the country, Madagascar’s meteorological office said on Sunday.
Batsirai made landfall in Mananjary on Saturday night as an “intense tropical cyclone”, packing winds of 165 kilometers per hour (102 miles per hour), Faly Aritiana Fabien of the country’s disaster management agency told AFP.
His colleague responsible for risk management in the same agency, Paolo Emilio Raholinarivo, listed the numbers of dead and their location in a text message to AFP but gave no further details.
However, the national meteorological office — which had warned of “significant and widespread damage” — said Sunday that “Batsirai has weakened”.
The cyclone’s average wind speed had almost halved to 80 kilometers per hour (50 miles per hour), while the strongest gusts had fallen back to 110 km/h from the 235 km/h recorded when it made landfall, Meteo Madagascar said.
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