Death toll from Madagascar's Cyclone Ava reaches 29

The torrential rains that accompanied last week’s passage of Cyclone Ava on the eastern part of the island of Madagascar left 29 people dead and more than 80,000 victims, according to a new report released Monday evening by the Malagasy authorities.

“At the national level, the provisional assessment reports 29 deaths, 22 missing persons, 17,170 internally displaced persons and 83,023 disaster victims,“the National Bureau of Disaster Risk and Disaster Management (BNGRC) said in a statement.

Seventeen of the victims died on Monday as a result of a landslide that caused a house to collapse in the town of Ivory, southeast of the capital of Antananarivo.

The cyclone hit Madagascar on Friday morning, before sweeping the eastern part of the Big Island and leaving the territory on Saturday evening.

Severe winds and torrential rains caused many rivers to overflow in the east of the island and caused major flooding, particularly in Tamatave (east) and the lower reaches of Antananarivo.

Many communities were left without electricity and roads were cut off.

Madagascar, one of the poorest countries in the world, is regularly affected by cyclones. By March 2017, Enawo had killed at least 78 people.

Over the past ten years, Madagascar has been hit by forty-five cyclones and tropical storms.

AFP