France to provide relief and security to people in Mayotte, after Saturday's destructive cyclone. Also: Western powers step up their engagement with the new rulers of Syria. And Serbia accuses journalists of spying.
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You're listening to the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. Hello, I'm Oliver Conway. We're recording this at 14 hours GMT on Monday the 16th of December. Two days after a devastating cyclone, French ministers arrive in the Indian Ocean territory of Mayotte. Western powers step up their engagement with the new rulers of Syria.
And the government of Serbia is accused of spying on journalists and activists.
Also in this podcast... The level of violence, both in terms of the number of people that seem to have been killed and also how they were treated afterwards. That's really the surprising thing.
Evidence of possible cannibalism in Bronze Age Britain. It has taken them two days to get there, but three ministers from France have now arrived in Mayotte, the French overseas territory in the Indian Ocean that was hit by Cyclone Chido on Saturday. Local officials say hundreds of people may be dead, possibly even a thousand or more.
In the past couple of hours, a senator has told journalists that people are starting to die of thirst and hunger. Three quarters of people on the island live below the poverty line, at least a third in shanty towns where homes were flattened. The storm was the most destructive in Mayotte for 90 years, with winds of at least 225 kilometres an hour.
The deputy head of the Red Cross in the region, Eric Samvar, gave us an update on the devastation.
The information we have from the field is that the situation is chaotic. Damages are massive. Most of the concrete buildings have been partially or totally damaged. And all the smaller constructions have been totally destroyed. The telecommunication is still very complicated and difficult. So the information is coming up very slowly to us.
Mayotte is poorer than any other region of France and questions are being asked about whether the French government could have done more to protect people there from extreme weather. Stephen Turton is a professor of environmental geography at Central Queensland University in Australia.
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