Mozambique Aid Efforts Get Boost

Blessed with a full day of sunshine and receding waters, aid groups Saturday stepped up food deliveries to 1 million flood victims in central and southern Mozambique.

With previously impassable roads opening, the international relief effort was expected to gain pace. In the largest overland delivery so far, trucks carrying 52 tons of food left the Indian Ocean port of Beira and headed south to the hard-hit city of Save.

Aid officials welcomed the rare stretch of sunny skies. Heavy rain during the past few days had grounded many helicopters and clogged some key roads, and food supplies were beginning to back up in warehouses.

“We’ve been able to supply the key areas, and with the good weather, we plan to fan out to more remote places,” said Lindsey Davies, a spokeswoman for the U.N. World Food Program.

The flooding that hit Mozambique last month was the worst here on record. Walls of water from rivers submerged towns, and thousands of people spent days clinging to trees and rooftops with no food or drinking water.

Up to 1 million people were driven from their homes or saw their crops and property destroyed. Some aid groups fear that thousands were killed. An accurate count is unlikely until the waters finish receding, but to date only a few hundred have been confirmed dead.

At least a quarter-million flood victims remained in 89 makeshift camps in central and southern Mozambique on Saturday, two weeks after the flood waters peaked.

Officials said there was a pressing need to move relief supplies overland. Many flood victims were still stranded Saturday in hard-to-reach rural areas, forcing relief teams to rely heavily on helicopters to deliver food.