More rains due

Heavy rains in Mozambique's central region over the past 24 hours have raised fears of major flooding in coming weeks, meteorologists warned on Thursday. "The entire Zambezi valley is seeing more heavy rains which are contributing to the rise of the Zambezi River level", Mussa Mustafa, spokesman for the Mozambique National Institute of Meteorology (INAM) told AFP.

He said the central province of Tete had seen the worst rainfall over the last 24 hours of about 150 mm of rain, followed by Zambezia province, further downstream with 38 mm. Rains in neighbouring Zambia and Malawi were expected to exacerbate the situation if the water accumulates and discharges into the Zambezi river, Mustafa said. Overall, Mustafa said the weather in southern Mozambique, scene of devastating floods last year, "is good", with neither cyclones nor much rain expected.