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.

Entire settlements were flattened when Cyclone Chido brought wind speeds of more than 225km/h (140mph), with the poorest living in makeshift shelters particularly hard hit.

Rescue workers, including reinforcements from France, are combing through the debris searching for survivors.

Widespread damage to infrastructure – including downed power lines and impassable roads – is severely hindering emergency operations.

Some of Mayotte’s population of 320,000 have said they are struggling with severe shortages of food, water and shelter.One resident of the capital city, Mamoudzou, waiting in line for supplies said: “We’ve had no water for three days now, so it’s starting to be a lot.

“We’re trying to get the bare minimum to live on, because we don’t know when the water will come back.

“Another Mamoudzou resident, John Balloz, said he was surprised he did not die when the cyclone struck.

“It was the wind, the wind blowing, and I was panicked, I screamed, ‘We need help, we need help.’ I was screaming because I could see the end coming for me,” he said.

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

Another said they had used a nearby school for shelter, adding: “We can still take refuge with our neighbours, and we’re still sticking together and being cautious. We need everyone to hold hands.”

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.

Its population is heavily dependent on French financial aid and has long struggled with poverty, unemployment and political instability.

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

French President Emmanuel Macron said his thoughts are with “our compatriots in Mayotte, who have gone through the most horrific few hours and who have, for some, lost everything, lost their lives”.

While some French aid and rescue workers have reached Mayotte, efforts to get to some communities are still under way.

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

French Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau, who is scheduled to visit the island to assess the damage and coordinate further relief efforts, acknowledged the “exceptional severity” of the cyclone and assured that efforts to assist the population are being ramped up.

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.

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