A huge storm swept across the French archipelago, thousands of people may have died

“I think for sure hundreds of people, maybe a thousand people, even thousands of people were killed,” Mayotte archipelago leader Francois-Xavier Bieuville told local media on December 15.

Mr. Bieuville said it would be difficult to count all the victims killed by Typhoon Chido and the government has not yet determined the data.

Typhoon Chido, the strongest storm in nearly a century, hit the Mayotte archipelago on the night of December 14 with winds of more than 200 km/h, destroying a series of houses, government buildings and a hospital.

“What we are going through is like a tragedy, like being affected by a nuclear war. I saw with my own eyes an entire neighborhood disappear,” said Mohamed Ishmael, a resident of Mamoudzou, the archipelago’s capital. Mayotte, recounted.

The French gendarmerie posted a video shot from above the Mayotte archipelago showing hundreds of temporary houses scattered across the hills almost completely collapsed. Houses near the beach had their roofs collapsed by coconut trees.

“I would like to send my condolences to the people of Mayotte, who have gone through the most horrifying moment. Some people have lost their fortunes, even their lives,” said French President Emmanuel Macron.

The French archipelago of Mayotte is located in the Indian Ocean. Over the past decades, thousands of East African migrants have tried to make their way to Mayotte because it has a higher standard of living and benefits from the French government.

According to the French Ministry of the Interior, there are more than 100,000 undocumented migrants living in Mayotte. Officials said it was difficult to determine the number of people killed by Typhoon Chido and that the storm also raised concerns about food and water supplies.

“As for the number of deaths, it will be complicated to determine because Mayotte is a Muslim enclave, where the dead are buried within 24 hours,” a French Interior Ministry official said.

Mayotte is nearly 8,000 km from Paris and is much poorer than the rest of France. This archipelago has been struggling with gang violence and social unrest for decades. More than three-quarters of people here live below the poverty line in France.