MIRERENI, Mayotte — (AP) — Crowds in Mayotte vented their frustration at French President Emmanuel Macron, with some booing, as he toured destruction wrought by the strongest cyclone to hit the French territory in nearly a century.
Particularly tense scenes on Thursday underscored the discontent that many residents of the archipelago in the Indian Ocean feel toward their government, based about 8,000 kilometers (5,000 miles) away in Paris.
The people of Mayotte, the poorest department in France, have previously said they suffer from underinvestment and neglect by the government. Now, they are expressing disappointment with the response to Cyclone Chido, which hit Saturday.
The storm has devastated entire neighborhoods and caused an unknown number of deaths, as many people ignored warnings, thinking the storm wouldn't be so extreme. Authorities have said hundreds or possibly thousands may be dead, but the official toll rose to 35 on Friday.
In the morning, Macron visited a neighborhood in Tsingoni on Mayotte's main island, where people remain without access to drinking water or phone service nearly a week after the storm.
As he walked through the area, some shouted: “We want water, we want water.” Others, however, offered him a warmer welcome, posing for selfies with the French leader and showing him their children.
But the night before, Macron was met with boos from dozens of residents in Pamandzi on another nearby island.
As people expressed frustration at the slow pace of aid efforts, Macron grabbed a microphone and became angry.
Moving towards the crowd, he said: “I have nothing to do with the cyclone, you can blame me, it wasn’t me!”
Macron, who is known for his appetite for debate and for confronting people who are angry at him, vacillated between acknowledging the hardship and pushing back against criticism.
“You’ve been through something terrible, everyone’s struggling, regardless of skin color,” he said.
Visibly losing patience, Macron then shouted: “If it wasn’t France, you’d be 10,000 times more screwed!”
The French president added: “There’s no place in the Indian Ocean where people get so much help!” A woman could be heard saying “we disagree.”
In a reflection of further frustration, a woman working with local authorities in Mayotte’s capital told The Associated Press on Friday that many deaths recorded by officials on the ground have not yet been published in official tallies.
The woman, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the situation, said most of the people who died were migrants, living in the hills in flimsy houses. Mayotte is home to 320,000 residents and an estimated 100,000 additional migrants.
The woman was not able to give her own estimate.
The reported death toll has only slowly ticked up in the week since the cyclone hit and stood at 35 on Friday, even though authorities have said they know that is a dramatic undercount.
Many in Mayotte have expressed disbelief that the toll hasn’t been updated more quickly.
The Interior Ministry said Friday that in addition to the deaths, 67 people were seriously injured and more than 2,400 slightly injured.
“The number of deaths does not reflect the reality of the 100,000 people living in precarious housing,” the statement said. “The prefect has therefore ordered the deputy prefect to set up a mission to search for the dead.”
It said 70% of residents were “seriously affected.”
The government said it has created a way to count the dead by ordering a census of the population district by district, with the help of mayors and local associations.
In just one example of how the toll might grow, French Health Minister Geneviève Darrieussecq said Friday that about 17% of hospital staff and 40% of all regional health staff on the archipelago are still unaccounted for.
“That’s around 60 to 70 people,” she said on news broadcaster FranceInfo, stressing a large part of the population still has no access to phone service.
Meanwhile, French military and local authorities scrambled to repair busted water pipes across the islands and get water to villages who haven’t had any.
In the village of Mirereni, about 35 kilometers (20 miles) outside Mayotte’s capital, Civil Security officers were trying to remove a large, felled mango tree that busted a water pipe.
The pipe provides water to around 10,000 people in three nearby villages. But officials said repairing it might take longer than usual because of the heat, which impacts equipment.
Locals said they’re worried the lack of water would cause disease. Earlier this year, there was a cholera outbreak on the island, with at least 200 cases.
Mayotte is part an archipelago located between Africa’s east coast and Madagascar that had been a French colony. Its residents voted to remain part of France in a 1974 referendum while the rest of the islands became the independent nation of Comoros.
In recent decades, the French territory has seen massive migration from Comoros, one of the world’s poorest countries, most of whom entered and live illegally in Mayotte.
Macron said Friday fighting illegal immigration was key to state efforts to get Mayotte back on track.
“When you have schools where the population has multiplied by five in two years, when you have hospitals that are exploding under migration pressure, they feel they are being abandoned even if the state is doing a lot,” he said. “We won’t be able to solve Mayotte’s fundamental problems unless we solve the problem of illegal immigration.”
He has proposed rules that would apply to the territory in order to reduce the numbers of people coming in illegally.
On Thursday, he also announced a special law that would help rebuild Mayotte more quickly and would seek to destroy slums and replace tin shacks with more solid buildings.
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Corbet reported from Paris.
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