Severe flooding in Zambezia province

An estimated 19,000 people have been affected by floods and some 300,000 people are estimated to be at risk after heavy rains resulted in flooding in Mozambique’s eastern Zambezia province, Frances Christie, public relations and media coordinator for UNDP in Maputo told IRIN on Tuesday. The INGC, Mozambique’s disaster management authority said that it had increased its stocks of food and other relief goods as part of its contingency planning. It said that boats and helicopters were also being dispatched to the affected areas. State-owned Radio Mozambique quoted provincial authorities as saying that the situation was “critical but under control”. More than 700 people died and up to 500,000 were displaced and infrastructure and crops were destroyed in severe flooding in Mozambique in February and March last year.