Cyclone Batsirai killed at least 10 people and displaced nearly 48,000 when it struck Madagascar overnight, the Madagascan National Office of Risk and Disaster Management said on Sunday.
The cyclone later weakened, but not before wreaking havoc in the Indian Ocean island nation, which is still reeling from a deadly tropical storm earlier this year.
Parts of the country were lashed with heavy rains and wind before the cyclone made landfall in Mananjary.
Photo: Reuters
It uprooted trees, destroyed buildings and forced residents to weigh down flimsy corrugated iron roofs along its path, reporters said.
The rain would cause flooding across parts of the country, the Madagascan National Meteorological Office said on Sunday.
Batsirai made landfall late on Saturday as an “intense tropical cyclone,” packing winds of 165kph, said Faly Aritiana Fabien of the disaster management agency.
His colleague responsible for risk management, Paolo Emilio Raholinarivo, listed 10 dead, but gave no further details.
However, the meteorological office — which had warned of “significant and widespread damage” — on Sunday said that Batsirai had weakened.
The cyclone’s average wind speed had almost halved to 80kph, while the strongest gusts had scaled back to 110kph from the 235kph recorded when it made landfall, Meteo Madagascar said.
“Mananjary is completely destroyed, no matter where you go everything is destroyed,” said one resident named Faby.
Another man, Fana, was certain that “almost 95 percent of the city has been destroyed.”
Inland, in Antsirabe, 365km northwest of Mananjary, the storm uprooted large trees in the town’s public park.
The Meteo-France weather service had earlier predicted that Batsirai would pose a “very serious threat” to Madagascar.
A subsidiary of a Hong Kong-based company that has lost control of two critical ports on the Panama Canal said it is seeking US$2 billion of compensation in damages from Panama over its “illegal” takeover of the ports. Panama Ports Co, a unit of Hong Kong’s CK Hutchison Holdings (長江和記實業), on Friday said in a statement that it is demanding the sum under international arbitration proceedings that it had already started. The Panamanian government last week seized control of the Balboa and Cristobal ports on each end of the Panama Canal, after the country’s Supreme Court declared earlier that a concession allowing
DETERRENCE: With 1,000 indigenous Hsiung Feng II and III missiles and 400 Harpoon missiles, the nation would boast the highest anti-ship missile density in the world With Taiwan wrapping up mass production of Hsiung Feng II and III missiles by December and an influx of Harpoon missiles from the US, Taiwan would have the highest density of anti-ship missiles in the world, a source said yesterday. Taiwan is to wrap up mass production of the indigenous anti-ship missiles by the end of year, as the Chungshan Institute of Science and Technology has been meeting production targets ahead of schedule, a defense official with knowledge of the matter said. Combined with the 400 Harpoon anti-ship missiles Taiwan expects to receive from the US by 2028, the nation would have
POSSIBILITIES EMERGE: With Taiwan’s victory and Japan’s narrow win over Australia, Taiwan now have a chance to advance if South Korea also beat the Aussies Taiwan has high hopes that the national baseball team would advance to the World Baseball Classic (WBC) quarter-finals after clinching a crucial 5-4 victory over South Korea in a nail-biting extra-inning game at the Tokyo Dome yesterday. Boosted by three home runs — two solo shots by Yu Chang (張育成) and Cheng Tsung-che (鄭宗哲) and a two-run homer by Stuart Fairchild — the triumph gave Taiwan a much-needed second victory in the five-team Pool C, where only the top two finishers would advance to the knockout stage in Miami, Florida. Entering extra innings with the game tied at four apiece, Taiwan scored
MISSION OF PEACE: The foreign minister urged Beijing to respect Taiwan’s existence as an independent nation, and work together to ensure peace and stability in the region Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) yesterday rejected Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi’s (王毅) comments about Taiwan, criticizing China as a “troublemaker” in the international community and a disruptor of cross-strait peace. Speaking at a news conference on the sidelines of the Chinese National People’s Congress, Wang said that Taiwan has always been a territory of China and that it would be impossible for it to become its own country. The “return” of Taiwan to China was the natural outcome of the Chinese people’s resistance against Japan in World War II, and that any pursuit of independence was “doomed
RSS