MAPUTO, Mozambique — Heavy rain has turned to drizzle most everywhere in this flooded African country, but with rivers still rising and rescuers faced with the haunting task of choosing whom to save, the heartache is far from over.
Helicopter crews from neighboring South Africa and Malawi, working for the third day Tuesday, rescued thousands of stranded people from tree limbs and rooftops along the bursting Limpopo and Save rivers. The waterways are still being fed by record rainfall over the past three weeks rushing downstream from Zimbabwe, Botswana and South Africa.
But for each desperate person snatched from near-certain death, untold others had to be left behind because there were too few rescuers. Often when a helicopter does return, relief workers said, those who had been left to fend for themselves are nowhere to be found.
"You get back there, and the people aren't there," said Michele Quintaglie, spokeswoman for the U.N. World Food Program, which estimates that 300,000 people have been affected by the floods and that tens of thousands are still waiting to be rescued. "Most of these people don't know how to swim. They can't even move from one rooftop to a nearby one that is taller."
And with children the No. 1 rescue priority, aid workers said families across the country are being torn apart by the relief operation. Witnesses report tearful scenes as parents offer their children to dangling soldiers who whisk them into the sky.
"We've got hundreds and hundreds of children in camps who don't know where their parents are," said Ian MacLeod, emergency coordinator for UNICEF. Varying estimates put the death toll from the flooding at between 150 and 200, but authorities fear that the number could increase into the thousands once the waters subside and bodies are recovered.
Maj. Louis Kirstein of the South African National Defense Force, which had five helicopter rescue teams flying Tuesday and expects to add two today, said the operation has taken a heavy emotional toll on the approximately 50 South African soldiers.
Pilots, eager to save everyone, are cramming 25 people in aircraft designed to hold six or eight, he said. They are hovering near trees and navigating between potentially deadly utility wires and television antennas. Frantic to make a speedy return, they are dropping passengers on any high ground they can find instead of making the journey to makeshift camps.
