Thousands feared dead after cyclone hits archipelago Mayotte

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Thousands were feared dead on Monday, after Cyclone Chido tore through Mayotte, a French Indian Ocean territory, leaving swaths of the population cut off.

Wooden beams from collapsed buildings litter the landscape, entangled with fallen branches and corrugated metal and plastic in video taken on the archipeligo which sits around 500 miles off the southeast coast of Africa, between Madagascar and Mozambique.

Coconut trees bend under the gusts of wind, their tall, towering trunks swaying against the gray sky. The extent of the destruction can be seen from above — a chaotic, colorful blanket of scattered debris from homes and buildings.

Several thousand people may have been killed, Mayotte prefect Francois-Xavier Bieuville told told Mayotte La 1ere, a local broadcaster, on Sunday.

Separately, French interior minister Bruno Retailleau said it could “take days and days” to establish an exact death toll, as he spoke with journalists on his arrival in Mayotte where he is holding talks with the authorities.

Cyclone Chido was a category 4 storm that brought winds in excess of 136 mph to the island, according a bulletin on Météo-France, the country's weather service. It subsequently weakened after hitting mainland Africa, the service added.Amid the wreckage, the only sounds heard on footage from scene are the calls of birds stepping over debris which litter the ground. Wooden fishing boats of various sizes have washed ashore on the beaches, and the “Karihani” inter-island ferry lies stranded, entwined with debris at an awkward angle along the shore.

Utility poles have also been ripped from the roadside, and a wire flies loose in the wind, whipping through the air and heavy rain.