Bayrou told BFMTV he thought the “alarmist and sometimes terrifying numbers put forward won’t be borne out in reality”.

The confirmed death toll on Mayotte so far is 35 but, in the immediate aftermath of the cyclone, local prefect François-Xavier Bieuville feared that it would “definitely be several hundred” and could reach thousands.

The prefect told France Info radio on Tuesday that investigations in the field were progressing well that “allow us to think that we will corroborate this figure of 35”.

Defending his initial remarks, Bieuville insisted “I have never been alarmist, I was simply unable to give the number of victims”.

Officials said it had been difficult to determine the scale of fatalities in the wake of the disaster 10 days ago, due to many areas of Mayotte being inaccessible and the fact that victims were buried within 24 hours in accordance with Islamic customs.

There is also uncertainty about the true population of Mayotte, a French Indian Ocean territory.

Officially it has 320,000 residents, but authorities estimate about 100,000 to 200,000 undocumented migrants may also be living there.

“I think [the number of dead] will be in the dozens and not in the thousands,” the prime minister told BFMTV on Monday night.

The archipelago is one of the poorest parts of France, with many of its residents living in shanty towns.

Cyclone Chido was the worst storm to hit the territory in 90 years, bringing winds of up to 260 km/h (160mph) and flattening areas where people lived in shacks with metal roofs.

France held a day of national mourning in the wake of the cyclone on Monday. President Emmanuel Macron visited the territory last week, and was heckled by angry locals demanding more aid in devastated areas.

Some survivors went for a week without water, communication or electricity.

Authorities restored water in the main points of the territory on Tuesday, Bieuville said. “Even if this water is still sometimes a little difficult to deliver, our fellow citizens have water.”

He also said there was no fuel shortage any more and cars could now be filled up.The prime minister had earlier said that a field hospital would also be operational by Tuesday morning.

Cyclone Chido moved on to continental Africa after hitting Mayotte, killing 120 people in Mozambique and 13 in Malawi.

French President Emmanuel Macron led Monday’s tribute by holding a minute’s silence for the storm’s victims.

He called for the nationwide remembrance during his visit to the island last week – where he was jeered by some islanders who criticised the slow delivery of aid.

It is feared hundreds, possibly thousands, of people died when Chido made landfall off Africa’s south-east coast on 14 December, bringing winds of up to 260 km/h (160mph) and 250mm of rainfall in the first 24 hours.

Speaking after the minute of silence was held, French Prime Minister François Bayrou said it was “symbolic of our solidarity with all those who are suffering”.

“It is a commitment to ensure that the national community is present, to rebuild Mayotte and to ensure that the people of Mayotte feel surrounded by an entire country,” he added.

Flags have been flown at half-mast in a show of solidarity in French cities including Paris, Marseille and Lyon.

The moment of silence was also observed in Mayotte, where more than a week after the storm, survivors are struggling without water, communication and electricity, while rescuers try to provide urgently needed assistance.

Estelle Youssouffa, a French MP for Mayotte, told the BBC that 90% of the island, which lies between the African mainland and Madagascar, had been destroyed.

“All public services are down,” she said.”Those who are ill are unable to get help or to go to the only hospital on the island, which has been almost totally destroyed.”

Mayotte Prefect François-Xavier Bieuville said that a field hospital would begin work on Tuesday, which will be able to treat up to 100 people a day.

Mayotte was already France’s most impoverished territory before the cyclone struck.

Chido – the worst storm to hit the archipelago in 90 years – flattened areas where people live in shacks with sheet metal roofs and left fields of dirt and debris.

At least 31 people are reported by French officials to have died, but the death toll is expected to be much higher with thousands still missing.

After Mayotte the storm hit the African mainland, killing at least 94 people in Mozambique and 13 in Malawi.Macron pledged to rebuild Mayotte’s devastated infrastructure and homes following his visit.

After touring the region in a helicopter to see the devastation, he said that Thursday was a day he would never forget.During the visit he was heckled and faced calls to resign from locals who demanded more aid in devastated areas.

Macron responded by telling locals: “I had nothing to do with the cyclone. You can blame me, but it wasn’t me.”

Prime Minister François Bayrou said the tragedy of Mayotte was probably the worst natural disaster in centuries of French history.

More than 100,000 people remain in Red Cross shelters after their homes were destroyed.

Macron will visit more neighbourhoods on Friday. He said the government would send more support to the territory soon, adding that France would observe a national day of mourning on Monday.At least 31 people are reported by French officials to have died, but the death toll is expected to be much higher with thousands still missing. A large part of the archipelago is also still without power.Officials say supplies of food and water are the top priority. Macron said he brought four tonnes of food and health cargo with him on his visit.After touring the region in a helicopter to see the devastation, he said Thursday was a day he would never forget.The president pledged to rebuild the islands’ devastated infrastructure and homes.

People shouted “Macron resign”, “you’re talking nonsense” and “water, water, water” as he inspected damaged areas.During his visit to the Mamoudzou hospital centre, the AFP news agency reported that one woman told Macron: “Nobody feels safe here… people are fighting over water.””Your services are overwhelmed,” one man at the hospital told Macron, according to Reuters. “Help has not reached where I live.”But others said they were grateful for Macron’s visit and urged him to stay for longer.The territory, located north of Madagascar, is the poorest part of France. It suffers from extensive social and economic problems, including high rates of illegal immigration from neighbouring Comoros and poor-quality housing and public services.Migrants are believed to have been amongst those worst affected by the cyclone.A state of exceptional natural disaster has been declared, allowing administrative barriers to be overcome in order to deal with the crisis more quickly and effectively.It has been activated for one month, but can be extended by periods of two months if required.

Chido – the worst storm to hit the archipelago in 90 years – brought wind speeds of more than 225km/h (140mph) on Saturday, flattening areas where people live in shacks with sheet metal roofs and leaving fields of dirt and debris.After Mayotte the storm hit the African mainland, killing at least 45 people in Mozambique and 13 in Malawi.

Preliminary figures from France’s interior ministry report 22 people have died, but Mayotte’s prefect has warned the toll could rise to thousands.

Health workers are concerned infectious diseases could spread, as residents have reported clean drinking water shortages and shops are rationing supplies. More aid is due to arrive on Wednesday.

Islanders spent a first night under curfew between 22:00 local time on Tuesday and 04:00 on Wednesday (19:00 and 01:00 GMT) as part of measures to prevent looting.

“Everyone is rushing to the stores for water. There is a general shortage,” Ali Ahmidi Youssouf, 39, told AFP on Wednesday while walking with a few bottles in his hand in the community of Pamandzi off the archipelago’s main island.

The authorities have said their priority is to get damaged water plants back up and running.

On Wednesday, authorities said the water system had been partially re-established and they hoped 50% of the island’s population would have access to water by the evening.

The French government said 120 tonnes of food are due to be distributed on Wednesday, while President Emmanuel Macron is scheduled to visit Mayotte on Thursday.

Half the territory remains without power. A newly imposed curfew requires people to stay in their homes for six hours overnight to prevent looting.

“We don’t have electricity,” Ambdilwahedou Soumaila, the mayor of the capital, Mamoudzou, told Radio France Internationale. “When night falls, there are people who take advantage of that situation.

“Mayotte is one of the poorest parts of France, with many of its residents living in shanty towns.

Chido – the worst storm to hit the archipelago in 90 years – brought wind speeds of more than 225km/h (140mph) on Saturday, flattening areas where people live in shacks with sheet metal roofs and leaving fields of dirt and debris.

“It was like a steamroller that crushed everything,” Nasrine, a teacher who did not give her last name, told AFP in her destroyed neighbourhood in Pamandzi

Another witness to the storm told Reuters that roofs “flew away as if they were pieces of paper”.

“A gust of wind broke the window and tore a wooden plank. The planks were 2m by 3m (6.5 by 9.8ft),” said Diego Plato, a photographer with the 5th Foreign Regiment of the French Legion.

He added that many of the legion’s buildings cannot function any more because they no longer have roofs.

Rescuers are now searching for survivors in the ruins, such as in Mamoudzou, while trying to unblock roads and clear rubble and downed trees.

On Wednesday morning, Mamoudzou residents whose houses survived the storm hammered metal sheets over damaged roofs.

Francois-Xavier Bieuville, Mayotte’s prefect, previously told local media the death toll could rise significantly once the damage was fully assessed.

He warned it would “definitely be several hundred” and could reach thousands.Chido also killed at least 45 people in Mozambique, and at least 13 in Malawi, according to those countries’ disaster management departments.

Officials have said that Mayotte’s relatively low official toll is due to many areas being inaccessible and some victims already being buried.

The difficulty is compounded by uncertainty about Mayotte’s population size.The territory officially has 320,000 inhabitants, but authorities estimate about 100,000 to 200,000 undocumented migrants may be living there.

Initial figures from the interior ministry show that 1,373 people in Mayotte were injured.

Cyclone Chido made landfall in Mozambique on Sunday, after wreaking havoc in the Indian Ocean territory of Mayotte.

Hundreds are feared dead in Mayotte – a French overseas region – and several people – including more than 200 Red Cross volunteers – are thought to be missing.

The INGD has called the situation in Mozambique “heart-breaking” and warned that the death toll is likely to rise.

More than 34,000 Mozambican families have lost their homes to Chido, which brought winds of around 260km/h (160mph).

Schools, health facilities and fishing boats were also destroyed.

Chido struck northern provinces that are regularly battered by cyclones. The area is also beset by attacks from Islamist militants.

The cyclone made landfall in Cabo Delgado before travelling further inland to Niassa and Nampula, where a three-year-old girl was among the fatalities.

Most of those killed by Chido were hit by falling objects, such as from destroyed brick walls, INGD spokesperson Paulo Tomas said.

Electricity and communications have also been upended – state-owned power company Electricidade de Moçambique (EDM) announced that around 200,000 customers are without power.

In Mayotte, widespread damage to infrastructure – with downed power lines and impassable roads – is severely hindering emergency operations.

Chido was the strongest storm to strike the territory in more than 90 years.

The official death toll on the islands has reached 21, but it is thought that hundreds of people may have died.

“We are talking about the entire area, if not the whole island completely destroyed and washed away. What is really scary is the number of people that are still missing,” Tommaso Della Longa, a spokesperson for the International Federation of Red Cross, told the BBC.

He added that more than 200 Red Cross volunteers are among those feared missing.

A French MP on the island, Estelle Youssouffa, has said she fears tens of thousands of people have died as a result of the cyclone.

She told the BBC that the magnitude of the destruction was hard to comprehend with 90% of the buildings damaged.The complete death toll may never be fully known, Youssouffa added. With thousands missing mostly in areas where undocumented immigrants were living, “by definition it’s a population that is… not on the radar of the administration”, she said.

Many of them “refused to go to the shelters because they feared they could be expelled from the island”, she added.The French authorities have imposed a night-time curfew in Mayotte to prevent looting.

Just last year, Mozambique was left reeling from Cyclone Freddy, one of the longest-lived storms ever recorded in the Southern Hemisphere, if not the whole world.

More than 180 in the country were killed, the World Meteorological Organization said.

Cyclone Chido brought wind speeds of more than 225km/h (140mph), flattening areas where the poorest lived in sheet-metal roof shacks.

“We’ve had no water for three days now,” said one resident of the capital city Mamoudzou. “Some of my neighbours are hungry and thirsty,” another one said.

French President Emmanuel Macron said he will be travelling to Mayotte “in the coming days”, as he pledged to support fellow citizens, civil servants and emergency services involved in rescue efforts.

Rescue workers, including reinforcements from France, are combing through the debris searching for survivors. Twenty people have been confirmed dead, but the local prefect said it could be thousands.

Macron said he will declare a national day of mourning, in light of “this tragedy, which has shaken each and every one of us”.

Authorities said they were having difficulty establishing the number of deaths due to the large number of undocumented migrants – over 100,000 – in a population of 320,000.Widespread damage to infrastructure – with downed power lines and impassable roads – is severely hindering emergency operations.

Supplies have begun to arrive, but there are severe shortages of food, water and shelter in certain areas. Some 85% of the territory remains without power, and about 20% of phones appear to be working. Some areas are beginning to get tap water.

But for Amalia Mazon, a 27-year-old midwife from Brussels who has been working at the island’s central hospital, access to drinking water and food continues to be a concern.”The water here is completely yellow. It’s unusable for us,” Ms Mazon told the BBC.

“We feel completely abandoned, and we don’t even know if help is coming. We have no news, we have no idea,” the midwife added.

Acting French health minister Geneviève Darrieussecq said the healthcare system in the archipelago had been “degraded” by the cyclone.

France colonised Mayotte in 1841 – and by the turn of the 20th Century added the three main islands that constitute the Comoros archipelago to its overseas territories.

The Comoros voted to become independent in 1974 but Mayotte decided to remain part of France.

The island’s population is heavily dependent on French financial aid and has struggled with poverty, unemployment and political instability.

About 75% of the population live below the national poverty line and unemployment hovers at around one in three.

“The images are apocalyptic. It’s a disaster, there’s nothing left,” a nurse working at the main hospital in Mamoudzou told BFM TV.Mamoudzou resident, John Balloz, said he was surprised he did not die when the cyclone struck.

“Everything is damaged, nearly everything, the water treatment plant, electric pylons, there’s a lot to do.

“Mohamed Ishmael, who also lives in the capital, told Reuters news agency: “You feel like you are in the aftermath of a nuclear war… I saw an entire neighbourhood disappear.”

“It’s the hunger that worries me most,” Mayotte Senator Salama Ramia told French media. “There are people who have had nothing to eat or drink” since Saturday, she said.

Francois-Xavier Bieuville, the island’s prefect, told local media the death toll could rise significantly once the damage was fully assessed. He warned it would “definitely be several hundred” and could reach the thousands.

Mayotte’s impoverished communities, including undocumented migrants who have travelled to the French territory in an effort to claim asylum, are thought to have been particularly hard hit due to the vulnerable nature of their housing.

The Muslim tradition of burying the dead within 24 hours also meant documenting the number of those who have perished was more difficult, the prefect said.

In addition to aid, 110 French soldiers have arrived to help with the rescue, with another 160 on the way. Some 800 others from the ranks of volunteers helping during emergencies were also being sent to join local police units.

After arriving in Mayotte, French Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau said “days and days” would be needed to ascertain human losses.

The relief operation is being co-ordinated from Reunion – another French overseas territory.French Red Cross spokesman Eric Sam Vah said that the situation was “chaotic”.

He said the organisation had been able to reach only 20 out of 200 Red Cross volunteers in Mayotte and echoed fears about the overall number of deaths.

“The totality of the slums have been totally destroyed, we haven’t received any reports of displaced people, so the reality could be terrible in the coming days,” the spokesman said.

Cyclone Chido also made landfall in Mozambique, where it brought flash flooding, uprooted trees and damaged buildings about 25 miles (40km) south of the northern city of Pemba. Three deaths have been reported.

The cyclone caused structural damage and power outages in the northern coastal provinces of Nampula and Cabo Delgado on Saturday morning, local authorities reported.

Guy Taylor, a spokesperson for aid agency Unicef in Mozambique, said “we were hit very hard in the early hours of this morning”.

“Many houses were destroyed or seriously damaged, and healthcare facilities and schools are out of action,” he added.

Mr Taylor said Unicef was concerned about “loss of access to critical services”, including medical treatment, clean water and sanitation, and also “the spread of diseases like cholera and malaria”.

Chido is the latest deadly storm to form of such high intensity.It strengthened as a result of its long track over the ocean.

The cyclone would have weakened had it made landfall on Madagascar’s rugged terrain.

But it is also the case that climate change has an impact – not necessarily in the frequency of storms but in the strength, Keith-Lucas says.

The storm has been now downgraded to a “depression” and is due to cross southern Malawi, then Mozambique’s Tete province, before heading towards Zimbabwe overnight into Tuesday.It may still bring 150-300mm of rain by the end of Tuesday.

It was difficult to ascertain the exact death toll after the cyclone, which also raised concerns about access to food, water, and sanitation, authorities said on Sunday.

Weather forecaster Meteo France said the cyclone swept through the French territory in the Indian Ocean, bringing winds of more than 200km/h (124mph) and damaging makeshift housing, government buildings and a hospital.

“Everyone understands that this was a cyclone that was unexpectedly violent,” French Prime Minister Francois Bayrou told reporters after an evening inter-ministerial meeting on Saturday.

Chido was also expected to make landfall on Sunday in northern Mozambique’s Cabo Delgado or Nampula provinces after battering Mayotte.

Located nearly 8,000km (4,970 miles) from Paris, a four-day journey by sea from France, Mayotte is significantly poorer than the rest of the country and has grappled with violence and social unrest for decades.

Tensions were exacerbated in the territory of 320,000 people earlier this year by a water shortage, as well as attempts to restrict citizenship rights.

“For the toll, it’s going to be complicated, because Mayotte is a Muslim land where the dead are buried within 24 hours,” a French Ministry of Interior official said.

Earlier, acting Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau said Chido left a “dramatic” trail of destruction.

“It will take several days” to establish the death toll, but “we fear that it is heavy”, he said as he left a government crisis meeting chaired by Bayrou.

Retailleau will travel to Mayotte on Monday, his office said.

Thani Mohamed-Soilihi, the junior minister for Francophonie and international partnerships who was born in Mayotte, has not heard from his family or friends on the islands in the aftermath of the cyclone, Bayrou and Retailleau said.

cyclone had put the region on high alert as it closed in on the African mainland, packing gusts of at least 226km/h (140mph).

The storm also hit the nearby Comoro Islands, causing flooding and damaging homes.

Acting Transport Minister Francois Durovray said on X that Petite-Terre’s Pamandzi airport had “suffered major damage”.

Chido is the latest in a string of storms worldwide to be fuelled by climate change, according to experts.

The “exceptional” cyclone was supercharged by particularly warm Indian Ocean waters, meteorologist Francois Gourand of France’s Meteo France weather service told the AFP news agency.

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said on Friday it was similar in strength to cyclones Gombe in 2022 and Freddy in 2023, which killed more than 60 people and at least 86 in Mozambique, respectively.

It warned that some 1.7 million people were in danger, and said the remnants of the cyclone could also dump “significant rainfall” on neighbouring Malawi through Monday, potentially triggering flash floods.

Zimbabwe and Zambia were also likely to see heavy rains, it added.