The death toll from Cyclone Freddy in Malawi has risen to 326.

The death toll in Malawi from the passage of Tropical Cyclone Freddy has risen to 326 since Sunday, the Department of Disaster Management (DoDMA) said this Thursday.

The DoDMA statement said there are still records of 201 missing and 774 people with various injuries as of Wednesday.

This Thursday, the country began a 14-day national mourning in memory of the dead.

The new figures bring the total number of deaths caused by Freddie in southern Africa to more than 400 after repeated strikes in Mozambique and Madagascar in recent weeks.

Flooding and landslides forced about 183,000 people to leave their home areas in Malawi after Freddie reached the southern region of the country, where the counties of Blantyre, Chikwawa, Chiradzulu, Machinga, Mulanye, Neno, Nsanje, Phalombe, Thiolo, Zomba and the most affected were mangochi.

Blantyre, the country’s economic capital and Malawi’s second largest city, was one of the hardest hit areas with 98 deaths.

This Thursday, Malawian President Lazarus Chakwera visited the Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital in Blantyre, where he greeted flood and landslide victims and praised health workers.

Freddy is already one of the longest-lived cyclones in decades, having traveled over 10,000 kilometers since it formed off northern Australia on February 4 and crossed the entire Indian Ocean into southern Africa.

The cyclone first hit the east coast of Madagascar on February 21 and returned to the island on March 5, leaving a trail of 17 dead and 300,000 injured.

In Mozambique, a cyclone that first hit on February 24 and made landfall late last week killed at least 58 people.

According to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), Freddie may have broken the record for the duration of Hurricane John, which lasted 31 days in 1994, although WMO experts will not confirm this record until the cyclone dissipates.