Maputo, 12 Jan (AIM) – Almost 100 people are known to have died in the first half of Mozambique’s 2025/2026 rainy season, according to the Director of the National Operational Emergency Centre (CENOE), Ana Cristina, in a balance of the impact of the current torrential rains, cited in Monday’s issue of the independent newssheet “Carta de Mocambique”.

The rainy season lasts from October through to March the following year. According to the summary given by Cristina, from 1 October to the present, there have been 92 deaths. The main cause has been lightning strikes, accounting for 49 of the deaths.

Other causes of fatalities included drowning, cholera outbreaks, the collapse of flimsily built houses, and electrocution by cables knocked down in the storms.

Cristina said that cholera caused 26 deaths. There was a cumulative total of 1,784 cases of the disease, with a lethality rate of 1.5 per cent.The number of households affected by the storms, said Cristina, was 24,205 (equivalent to about 121,690 individuals).As for material damage, Cristina said the storms had destroyed 4,269 houses and damaged 8.792. A further 10,110 houses had been inundated.462 classrooms in 223 schools were damaged, affecting over 51,800 pupils. Three health units were damaged.Cristina said the storms had affected 6,288 hectares of farmland – but only 15 hectares were regarded as completely lost. 814 domestic animals had died.

Some 8,000 kilometres or road were damaged – but this figure is certain to rise. The delegate of the National Roads Administration (ANE) in the southern province of Gaza, told the independent television station STV on Monday morning that eight of the major roads in the province were damaged, although still usable.

Full repairs to these stretches would cost 500 million meticais (about 7.8 million US dollars, at the current exchange rate), but ANE in Gaza only has about 100 million meticais available.

The Mozambican relief agency, the National Disaster Management Institute (INGD), has evacuated 4,520 people in Zambezia and Nampula provinces. They are now in three accommodation centres, where they are receiving food aid, and other essential support.

In Nampula, the torrential rains have cut Larde district off from the rest of the province. The road linking Larde to Nampula city has been cut in several places, making it impossible to provide basic services to the local population and to supply the Irish company Kenmare Resources, which operates a dredge mine, extracting titanium minerals, in Larde.