By Tassilo Hummel

MAMOUDZOU (Reuters) – People in storm-ravaged Mayotte pleaded with French President Emmanuel Macron to do more to help on Thursday as he toured the overseas territory where many are feared dead in ruins left behind by Typhoon Chido.

Some of the crowds gathered outside the airport booed the presidential motorcade, while others said they were grateful for Macron’s visit and urged him to stay longer.

French officials have only been able to confirm 31 deaths more than five days after the storm, but some say they fear there could be thousands. A lawmaker told Macron that some victims were buried in mass graves. Reuters could not immediately confirm that.

Many areas remain inaccessible. Heavy rains in the capital Mamoudzou and other areas worsened the plight of thousands of people whose shack homes were flattened.

As Macron disembarked from a plane carrying food and medical aid, airport workers pleaded for support.

“Take your time. Stay with us. Give us solutions,” an airport security worker named Assane Haloi told him. “Give us emergency help, because in Mayotte, there is none.”

Macron’s office said he would stay on the islands overnight and visit the neighborhoods on Friday. It was not immediately clear how long he would stay.

His government has been accused by opposition politicians of neglecting Mayotte, and many residents of impoverished areas told Reuters they had not received any aid since Chido hit.

“Your services are overloaded,” one person at the hospital told Macron in a testy exchange. “Help didn’t reach where I live.”

Macron said his government would send more support soon, including 400 more gendarmes to ensure security, and noted an influx of food and water arriving by air and sea.

“We must all unite. From the first day people are moving day and night. We must not divide ourselves,” he said.

THE TOLL OF DEATH IS UNCLEAR

Authorities have warned that it is difficult to work out how many have died in a territory that is home to many undocumented migrants from Comoros, Madagascar and other countries. Official statistics put the population of Mayotte at 321,000, but many say it is higher.

Some victims were buried immediately, according to Muslim tradition, before their deaths were counted.

Health workers say they are bracing for a surge of disease as dead bodies lie unburied and people struggle to get clean drinking water.

“We are facing open-air mass graves, there are no rescuers, no one has come to collect the buried bodies,” Estelle Youssoufa, who represents Mayotte in the national parliament, told Macron. He did not say where the graves were.

Residents of Mayotte crowded water distribution points and wells to fill jerrycans and buckets. Some wash or wash themselves in rivers.

“When we got here everything was destroyed, nobody was standing,” El-Yassine Ibrahim told Reuters in Doujani, a poor neighborhood south of Mamoudzou.

“Everything was destroyed. Since then, little by little, we are sorting and gathering things, and we will see what we can do,” he said, as his relatives toured the ruins.

Three out of four people in Mayotte live below the national poverty line. While it exports vanilla, coffee and cinnamon, it remains dependent on support from metropolitan France and attracts relatively few tourists.

“All the pipes are broken everywhere. There is no water in Mayotte. We need water to do housework, to cook, to wash, to bathe. To drink water, we buy it from the shops, ” Zalahta M’Madi, 44, said.

“No one is telling us if the water will come back tomorrow or the day after tomorrow or in a month. So we are all worried.”

The death toll in continental Africa, where the storm hit after passing Mayotte, was 45 in Mozambique and 13 in Malawi, officials in those countries said.