Mozambique seeks help in flood refugee crisis

CAIA, Mozambique, Feb 14 (Reuters) Mozambique may need emergency help to airlift food and other supplies to thousands of flood refugees stranded in evacuation centres that are fast running out of supplies, officials said today.

Mozambique's National Institute for Disaster Management (INGC) says the country faces a fresh humanitarian disaster as some 45,000 people crammed into temporary camps run short of food, fuel and basic shelter.

''The people have been there for over a week without proper feeding ... they are isolated and we can't go there by road and we have to airlift some of them and drop food,'' INGC national director Paulo Zucula told Reuters.

''We now have to change our focus from rescue operations to the accommodation centres,'' he said.

The floods have hit some 80,000 people, many of whom have been cut off from the rest of the country as rising waters from the Zambezi river cut off access roads and washed out bridges.

Zucula, who yesterday visited the worst hit region of Mutarara in the northern province of Tete, where more than 17,000 people are living in make-shift shelters of twigs and grass, said food and sanitation were now top priorities.

''The rains are making our operations very difficult, probably we will call for help in air assistance in air lifting operations ...

we will ask for this help now,'' he said.

WILD FRUIT The government says at least 29 people have died as torrential rains pounded the central provinces of Tete, Manica, Sofala and Zambezia over the past two months.

The national broadcaster, TVM, reported on Wednesday that a further 10 people had drowned in the lower Zambezi in the past four days, although this could not be immediately confirmed.

The UN World Food Programme yesterday began distributing food to evacuees, but the operation has been complicated by poor access roads.

Reuters reporters accompanying officials on a fly-over of the region saw waterlogged farmland split into islands and grass-thatched houses and schools submerged along the river.

In make-shift accommodation centres, anxious and hungry children stood in the rain crying for help.

Some flood victims say they have been surviving for more than a week on wild fruit, some of which pose serious health hazards, and untreated water.

''We have not eaten anything since we arrived here last week.

Children will die and we cannot feed them with wild fruit because it's too dangerous,'' said Johane Balicholo, an official in charge of the Samarusha accommodation centre in Mutarara.

The scale of the suffering has drawn comparisons to the 2000/2001 floods that killed some 700 people in southern and central Mozambique -- the worst flooding to hit the former Portuguese colony in some 50 years.

In neighbouring Zambia, flooding also was becoming more serious today, according to officials who said they had received reports of bridges and houses being submerged and game lodges, a major source of tourism revenue, forced to close.

Local media said as many as 50,000 people had been displaced by the flooding, which could worsen when rains intensify in the coming weeks, as is typical in the southern African nation.

''We fear for the worst in March when floods are likely to get out of hand,'' said Bernard Namachila, a senior government official who is coordinating disaster management.

Reuters KR DB2324