Floods and tropical storms ravage Mozambique

Flooding has cut off food supplies to 4,000 people in northwestern Mozambique, as swelling rivers and a strong tropical storm raise fears of severe weather emergencies, state media said on Thursday.

"At this moment all our teams, including marine officials, the Red Cross, the government, health, we're all prepared to face this storm," Antonio Duarte, an official from the central coast district of Pebane, told TVM television.

The station reported that food aid would be needed in Cuamba, in the northwestern Niassa province, where the Lurio river basin has swollen under heavy rains that have been pounding the southern Africa region for weeks.

"We're monitoring it," said Duarte adding that rains over the past weekend damaged hundreds of houses and left three people injured in Pebane.

Flooding in the upper Zambezi river basin has already displaced hundreds of thousands in Angola, Namibia and Zambia, the United Nations reports.

The deluge has jeopardized food security in the southern African region and raised the threat of cholera and malaria outbreaks.

As the flood waters travel downstream, officials in Mozambique are nervously watching their own stretch of the Zambezi basin.

Last year, heavy rains in Zambia, Zimbabwe and Malawi caused flash flooding in Mozambique that displaced tens of thousands of people and destroyed almost 100,000 hectares of crops.

Emergency officials in Mozambique are also monitoring tropical storm Izilda, which meteorologists say is gaining strength in the Mozambique Channel.

Mozambique is no stranger to weather-related disasters. In 2000-2001 about 700 people were killed in one of the country's worst floods when torrential rains hit the southeastern African country.