The Latest: UN sends helicopter to aid to Zimbabwe areas
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}The Latest on the efforts to recover from Cyclone Idai in Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Malawi (all times local):
12:40 p.m.
The United Nations World Food Program received a US$280,000 from the European Union to help provide urgently-needed logistical support to the humanitarian response in the wake of the cyclone that has devastated eastern Zimbabwe, Malawi and Mozambique.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}The funds will support the deployment of a U.N. Humanitarian Air Service helicopter that will work to deliver much-needed assistance to the two most-affected districts in Zimbabwe. The helicopter will deliver medicine, shelter equipment, food and transport of personnel to the areas of Chimanimani and Chipinge, the worst-hit districts in Zimbabwe.
WFP plans emergency food assistance to approximately 270,000 people in seven affected districts in Zimbabwe, including Chimanimani and Chipinge, for three months.
Cyclone Idai hit Beira, Mozambique on 14 March, and continued across the plains of central Mozambique and devastated eastern Zimbabwe with heavy rains and strong winds. Roads and bridges, particularly in the district of Chimanimani, were washed away and communities left stranded. In Zimbabwe, some 250,000 people have been affected, and at least 154 deaths have been reported by the government plus another 120 Zimbabwean bodies were swept into Mozambique and buried there.
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Relief operations are pressing into remote areas to find survivors of the cyclone that ripped into central Mozambique, while trucks carrying aid attempt to travel a badly damaged road to the hard-hit city of Beira.
The United Nations is making an emergency appeal for $282 million for the next three months and says some 1.8 million people in Mozambique need urgent help after Cyclone Idai.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Authorities say the death toll of at least 761 is "very preliminary" and more bodies will be found as floodwaters drain away.
Diseases such as cholera are expected as more than a quarter-million survivors gather in displacement camps both formal and informal.
The United States says it has donated nearly $3.4 million in emergency food assistance to the U.N.'s World Food Program.