U.S. Delivers Aid in Mozambique

After several days of waiting in neighboring South Africa for the go-ahead, U.S. helicopters touched down in Mozambique on Thursday and began speedily delivering thousands of pounds of rice to hungry flood victims. But heavy rains kept aid from most of the country.

With relief agencies unable to reach scores of muddy, squalid makeshift camps in southern Mozambique, food for refugees could run out soon, said Lindsey Davies, spokeswoman for the United Nations’ World Food Program. More than a quarter of a million people are jammed into camps there.

Thursday’s daylong downpour “just made a bad situation worse,” Davies said.

Forecasters said the rains were expected to continue through Sunday.

The U.S. Air Force was able to deliver sacks of rice and other aid to villages along the hard-hit Save River Valley to the north, where it was sunny.

The military’s relief mission stalled Wednesday in South Africa as commanders waited for the go-ahead from aid agencies as to when and where to deliver goods. Air Force Col. Steve Eddy, head of air operations for the U.S. mission, said lingering problems were resolved late Wednesday and early Thursday.

Soldiers from other countries who already have been transporting aid were unimpressed by the launch of the U.S. effort.

“The Hollywood show is here,” one German military pilot said as the commander of the U.S. mission arrived in Beira aboard a specially equipped C-130 cargo plane. Greeting the plane were 30 journalists and a wall of television cameras.

Up to a million Mozambicans were made homeless or lost their livelihoods as a result of the floods. Aid agency officials expect the death toll to soar into the thousands.

Continuing rain was a nightmare outside Mozambique as well. Aid agencies Thursday rushed food, medicine and blankets to more than 700,000 flood victims on the nearby Indian Ocean island of Madagascar. Flooding there in recent weeks has killed 130 people.