There are fears of a heavy death toll in the French overseas territory of Mayotte after Cyclone Chido caused severe damage over the weekend. The French Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau said at least 11 people had died, while an earlier provisional toll from Mayotte authorities, and shared with Agence France-Presse (AFP), said 14 people had been killed so far.

The ministry said it was proving difficult to get a precise tally of the dead and injured amid fears the death toll will increase. A hospital in Mayotte reported that nine people were in critical condition in the hospital and 246 others were injured.

Retailleau will travel to Mayotte on Monday, his office said, alongside 160 soldiers and firefighters to reinforce the 110 already deployed to the islands from mainland France ahead of the storm.

The tropical cyclone blew through the southeastern Indian Ocean, also affecting Comoros and Madagascar. Mayotte was directly in the path of the cyclone and suffered extensive damage on Saturday, officials said. The prefect of Mayotte said it was the worst cyclone to hit Mayotte in 90 years.

Chido has now made landfall in Mozambique on the African mainland, where emergency officials had warned that 2.5 million people could be impacted in two northern provinces.

Rescue workers and supplies are being rushed in by air and sea, but their efforts are likely to be hindered by damage to airports and electricity distribution in a territory where even clean drinking water was already subject to chronic shortages.

Lockdown

Mayotte's 320,000 residents had been ordered into lockdown as cyclone Chido bore down on the islands around 500 kilometers east of Mozambique. Its gusts of at least 226 kilometers per hour had "completely destroyed" the territory's many shantytowns, acting Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau said following a crisis meeting in Paris late Saturday.

Electricity poles were hurled to the ground, trees uprooted and sheet-metal roofs and walls torn off improvised structures inhabited by at least one-third of the population. "It will take several days" to establish the full death toll, but "we fear that it is heavy", Retailleau added.

Medical personnel and equipment were being delivered from Sunday by air and sea, said the prefecture in La Réunion, another French Indian Ocean territory some 1,400 kilometers away on the other side of Madagascar. "We are continuing to evaluate the needs of emergency services and the population to organize the schedule" of deployment, the prefecture said in a statement.

More than 15,000 homes are without electricity, acting Environment Minister Agnes-Pannier Runacher has said, while telephone access is severely limited even for emergency calls. Acting Transport Minister Francois Durovray wrote on X that the Pamandzi airport on Petite-Terre, the smaller of Mayotte's two major islands, had "suffered major damage."