Lilongüe (EFE)
“The death toll has risen from 326 to 438, with 918 injured and 282 people unaccounted for,” the government agency said late on Friday.
The new figures put the total death toll in southern Africa at more than 530, after the cyclone has repeatedly hit Madagascar and Mozambique in recent weeks.
According to DODMA, floods, strong winds and landslides triggered by Freddy in the Southern Region of the country forced the displacement of more than 345,000 people.
The affected districts are Blantyre, Chikwawa, Chiradzulu, Machinga, Mulanje, Neno, Nsanje, Phalombe, Thyolo, Zomba and Mangochi.
The eponymous city of Blantyre, the commercial capital and second city of the country, was one of the most affected places, registering at least 98 of the deceased.
The phenomenon led Malawian President Lazarus Chakwera to declare a “state of disaster”, who decreed fourteen days of national mourning on Thursday to “honor the lives lost by Cyclone Freddy”.
Freddy is already one of the longest-running cyclones in recent decades, covering more than 10,000 kilometers since it formed in northern Australia on February 4 and crossed the entire Indian Ocean to southern Africa.
The cyclone made its first impact on the eastern coast of Madagascar on February 21 and returned to the island on March 5, where it left a total of 17 dead and affected 300,000 people.
In Mozambique, the cyclone, which made its first impact on February 24 and made landfall again late last week, has caused at least 80 deaths.
As reported by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), Freddy could have broken the record for the duration of Hurricane-Typhoon John, which lasted 31 days in 1994, although the organization’s experts will not confirm this record until the cyclone has dissipated.