In the neighbouring town of Chokwe, the 9,000 residents who stayed behind — out of a population of 60,000 — began clean-up efforts, laying out to dry the possessions they were able to salvage.
Others walked through the streets drunk, having helped themselves to alcohol in flood-damaged stores in a town in urgent need of clean water and food.
With relief efforts focused on camps located around 30 kilometres (20 miles) away, some locals said they were struggling to get their hands on emergency supplies.
A bereaved father recalled how on Wednesday the flood waters swept his five-year-old daughter from his arms as they tried to escape to higher ground.
“The water was up to my neck. I was carrying her. The water took her,” Jose Nhanve told AFP.
He said he spent two days scouring the edges of the floodwaters for Eldinha and making enquiries with the authorities, without success.
Four bodies were found in Chokwe, whose flood-ravaged streets were also littered with rotting animal carcasses.
According to a toll from the United Nations on Friday, the severe flooding killed at least 36 people, most in the southern province of Gaza.
The floods, which have also hit neighbouring South Africa and Zimbabwe, are the result of days of torrential rains this month that swelled the river.
The UN children’s agency UNICEF said Sunday that the number of people forced to flee their homes in the Limpopo valley had reached 108,000.
About 23,000 families have sought shelter in camps in Gaza, and the UN World Food Programme has begun feeding some 75,000 flood-affected people, according to the United Nations.
While the river has started to recede in Chokwe and Guija, the situation remains serious in the partly inundated coastal tourist city of Xai-Xai.
Some 45,000 people were thought to be at risk there from the deluge, Rita Almeida, a spokeswoman for Mozambique’s Disaster Relief Management Institute, told AFP.
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