Cyclone Gezani kills four in Mozambique: officials

by AFP Staff Writers
Maputo (AFP) Feb 14, 2026
Cyclone Gezani has killed at least four people in Mozambique, authorities in the southern African country said Saturday, days after it left a trail of death and destruction across Madagascar.

The cyclone, which killed 41 people in Madagascar according to the latest toll, did not reach the Mozambican coast, remaining 50 kilometres (30 miles) from shore.

But it lashed the southern city of Inhambane and the surrounding region, packing winds of up to 215 kilometres per hour, according to meteorologists.

The storm left more than 130,000 people without power, the national electric company said.

Images on social media showed trees and an electric pole felled by the storm in Inhambane, a city of 100,000 people.

A hotel, the Monte Carlo, which sheltered residents from poor neighbourhoods on the city's south side, shared pictures with AFP of metal roofs ripped from buildings.

In Madagascar, the government declared a national emergency and said the storm had caused an estimated $142 million in damage.

The eye of the cyclone passed Tuesday over Madagascar's second-largest city, Toamasina, population 400,000, leaving it devastated.

The Indian Ocean island's leader, Colonel Michael Randrianirina, said around 75 percent of the city had been destroyed.

Madagascar cyclone death toll rises to 40, water, power still out
Antananarivo, Madagascar (AFP) Feb 13, 2026 - The death toll from Cyclone Gezani rose to 40 on Friday, three days after its passage across Madagascar, as officials struggled to restore widespread cuts to power and water supplies.

In its latest update Friday, the National Office for Risk and Disaster Management (BNRGC) said 40 people had been killed and 427 people injured, as one aid worker spoke of "apocalyptic" scenes on the Indian Ocean island.

Six people were still missing and the cyclone had affected 273,417 people -- or 74,393 households, the BNRGC added.

After visiting the island's second-largest city of Toamasina, which bore the brunt of Gezani's 250-kilometre-per-hour (155-mile-per-hour) winds, the World Food Programme's Madagascar director Tania Goosens told journalists that "the scale of destruction is overwhelming".

"The authorities have reported that 80 percent of the city has been damaged," she added.

"The city is running on roughly five percent of electricity and there is no water," she said, adding that the WFP's office and one warehouse "were also completely destroyed".

AFP photos showed the scale of the destruction, with trees and sheets of metal scattered across the streets, hampering recovery efforts.

"A lot of zones are still inaccessible to rescue workers," one aid worker told AFP. "Bridges are down, roads are destroyed. It's really terrible."

The situation was even worse beyond Toamasina, he added. "In the outlying towns, in rural areas, it's apocalyptic."

China has offered 100 million yuan (about $14.5 million) in aid, Madagascar's presidency announced.

On Thursday, France said it was sending food and rescue teams from the French island of La Reunion after Madagascar's new leader, Colonel Michael Randrianirina, called for "international solidarity".

Fears that the full force of Cyclone Gezani would be unleashed on southern Mozambique -- already hit by devastating floods this year -- faded after meteorologists at the CMRS on the French island of La Reunion downplayed that prospect.

It would instead brush the coast of Mozambique to the west, they said, bringing heavy rainfall and strong winds to the Mozambican coastal city of Inhambane and the tourist resort of Tofo.

Officials in Inhambane called on those of the city's 100,000 residents living in makeshift housing to evacuate to a safer place.