Mayotte residents demand more help from Macron after deadly cyclone

By Tassilo Hummel and Michel Rose

MAMOUDZOU/PARIS (Reuters) -People in storm-ravaged Mayotte implored French President Emmanuel Macron on Thursday to do more to help as he toured the overseas territory, where scores are feared dead in the rubble left by Cyclone Chido.

Some in the crowds that gathered outside the airport booed the presidential motorcade, while others said they were grateful for Macron's visit and urged him to stay longer.

Officials in France's have only been able to confirm 31 fatalities more than five days after the cyclone, but some have said they fear thousands could have been killed. A lawmaker told Macron that some victims had been buried in mass graves. Reuters could not immediately confirm that.

Many areas remain inaccessible. Heavy rain in the capital Mamoudzou and other areas has worsened the plight of thousands of people whose shantytown dwellings were flattened.

As Macron disembarked from a plane carrying food and medical aid, airport workers pleaded for support.

"Take your time. Stay with us. Give us solutions," an airport security worker named Assane Haloi told him. "Give us emergency help, because in Mayotte, there is nothing."

Macron's office said he would stay on the islands overnight and visit neighbourhoods on Friday. It had not previously been clear how long he would stay.

His government has been accused by opposition politicians of neglecting Mayotte, and several residents of impoverished areas told Reuters they had not received any help since Chido struck.

"Your services are overwhelmed," one man at the hospital told Macron in a testy exchange. "Help has not reached where I live."

Macron said his government would send more support soon, including 400 more gendarmes to ensure security, and noted a surge of food and water arriving by air and sea.

"We all have to get together. From the first day people mobilized day and night. We must not divide ourselves," he said.

He later announced that France would observe Dec. 23 as a day of national mourning. He also said a special law suspending usual regulations would be passed to speed up reconstruction, on the model used for the Notre-Dame Cathedral.

"We were able to do it for the Olympics. We did it to rebuild Notre-Dame, and so we will do it to rebuild Mayotte," he told local officials.

He faced more angry questions from crowds waiting for him at a roundabout in Pamandzi, a smaller island of the archipelago. "We just need water, why don't you put the water for us?" a woman asked him, while others booed.

"I'm here to receive some of that anger, it's my role," Macron said, promising 50% of locals would have water by the weekend.

DEATH TOLL UNCLEAR

The authorities have warned it will be difficult to work out how many have died in a territory that is home to large numbers of undocumented migrants from Comoros, Madagascar and other countries. Official statistics put Mayotte's population at 321,000, but many say it is much higher.

Some victims were buried immediately, in accordance with Muslim tradition, before their deaths could be counted.

Health workers say they are bracing for a surge of disease as dead bodies lie unburied and people struggle to get clean drinking water.

"We are facing open-air mass graves, there are no rescuers, no one has come to collect the buried bodies," Estelle Youssoufa, who represents Mayotte in the national parliament, told Macron. She did not say where the graves were.

Mayotte residents crowded water distribution points and wells to fill up jerrycans and buckets. Others did laundry or washed themselves in rivers.

"When we got here it was all devastated, nothing was standing," El-Yassine Ibrahim told Reuters in Doujani, a poor neighbourhood south of Mamoudzou.

"Everything was ravaged. Since then, little by little, we've been sorting and gathering things, and we'll see what we do next," he said, as his relatives combed through the rubble.

Three out of four people in Mayotte live below the national poverty line. While it exports vanilla, coffee and cinnamon, it remains heavily dependent on support from metropolitan France and attracts relatively few tourists.

"All the pipes are broken everywhere. There is no more water in Mayotte. We need water to do the housework, to cook, to wash, to bathe. To drink water, we buy it in the stores," Zalahta M'Madi, 44, said.

"No one tells us whether the water will be back tomorrow or the day after tomorrow or in a month. So we are all worried."

The death toll in continental Africa, where the storm hit after passing through Mayotte, jumped to 73 in Mozambique and stood at 13 in Malawi, according to officials in those countries.

(Reporting by Tassilo Hummel in Mayotte; Additional reporting by Gabriel Stargardter, Makini Brice and Michel Rose in Paris and Custodio Cossa in Maputo; Writing by Ammu Kannampilly and Aaron Ross; Editing by Angus MacSwan, Andrew Heavens and Sandra Maler)