Authorities in Mayotte were racing on Tuesday to get food and water to residents stricken by the weekend's devastating cyclone and fighting to stop hunger, disease and lawlessness spreading in the French overseas territory, officials said.
Hundreds or even thousands could be dead in the wreckage of Cyclone Chido, they said. The storm laid waste to large parts of the archipelago off east Africa, which is France's poorest overseas territory and a major destination for illegal immigration.
With many areas still inaccessible and some victims buried before their deaths could be officially counted, it could take days to determine the full extent of the destruction.
So far, 22 deaths and more than 1,400 injuries have been confirmed, Ambdilwahedou Soumaila, the mayor of the capital Mamoudzou, told Radio France Internationale on Tuesday morning.
"The priority today is water and food," Soumaila said. "There are people who have unfortunately died where the bodies are starting to decompose that can create a sanitary problem."
"We don't have electricity. When night falls, there are people who take advantage of that situation."
Twenty tonnes of food and water are due to start arriving on Tuesday by air and sea. The French government said late on Monday it expects 50% of water supplies to be restored within 48 hours and 95% within the week.
France's interior ministry announced that a curfew would go into effect on Tuesday night from 10 p.m. to 4 a.m. local time.
Rescue workers have been searching for survivors amid the debris of shantytowns that were bowled over by 200 kph (124 mph) winds.
Chido was the strongest storm to strike Mayotte in more than 90 years, French weather service Meteo France said. It also killed at least 15 people in Mozambique and seven in Malawi, officials in those countries said.
Estelle Youssouffa, a lawmaker from Mayotte, told France Inter radio an eerie silence had fallen over Mayotte, with even the Muslim prayer call failing to ring out from damaged mosques.
President Emmanuel Macron said after an emergency cabinet meeting on Monday that he would visit Mayotte in coming days.
ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION
Mayotte has been grappling with unrest in recent years, with many residents angry at illegal immigration and inflation.
More than three-quarters of its roughly 321,000 people live in relative poverty, and about one-third are estimated to be undocumented migrants, most from nearby Comoros and Madagascar.
The territory has become a stronghold for the far-right National Rally with 60% voting for Marine Le Pen in the 2022 presidential election runoff.
France's acting Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau said in a news conference in Mayotte that the early warning system had worked "perfectly" but that many of the undocumented had not come to designated shelters.
Other officials have said undocumented migrants may have been afraid to go to shelters for fear of being arrested.
The toll of the cyclone, Retailleau said in a subsequent post on X, underscored the need to address "the migration question".
"Mayotte is the symbol of the drift that governments have allowed to take hold on this issue," he said. "We will need to legislate so that in Mayotte, like everywhere else on the national territory, France retakes control of its immigration."
Left-wing politicians, however, have pointed the finger at what they say is the government's neglect of Mayotte and failure to prepare for natural disasters linked to climate change.
"A cyclone, fuelled by climate change, struck an abandoned French territory. Hundreds, even thousands of deaths are expected. And you write that Mayotte's problem is...immigration. Disgusting," Melanie Vogel, a senator from the Europe Ecology party, wrote in response to Retailleau's X post.
Prime Minister Francois Bayrou, appointed last week to steer France out of its political crisis, also faced criticism after he travelled to the town of Pau, where he is the mayor, to participate in a municipal council meeting on Monday.
"I would have indeed preferred that the prime minister, instead of taking a plane to Pau, took a plane to Mamoudzou," Yael Braun-Privert, president of the National Assembly, told France Info.
