By Charles Mangwiro MAPUTO, March 22 (Reuters) - Almost 350,000 victims of last month's cyclone and flooding in southern and central Mozambique face serious food shortages, officials said on Thursday. Paulo Zucula, head of Mozambique's Institute for Natural Disaster Management (INGC), told Reuters officials were feeding 183,000 victims in the central part of the country and 164,000 in the south. "We are running out of food stocks ... The government will not have food after 15 days," he said by telephone from Caia in the central Sofala province. Zucula said food distribution had been centralised in single kitchens in each refugee centre, ending handouts to individuals. "We need to explain to the population that this is a serious problem and resorting to a common kitchen is a solution ... children will receive rations with a specific diet," he said. The government is seeking $71 million for rehabilitation projects after floods in the Zambezi valley swamped hundreds of thousands of hectares of fertile land and forced some 140,000 people into temporary camps. About 45 people died. Cyclone Favio killed 10 people in the tourist town of Vilanculos when it came overland before heading into the provinces of Sofala and Manica. Before the floods, at least half a million people in 48 districts, mostly along the Zambezi valley, were chronically short of food. Southern Africa has been battling a chronic dry spell for seven years. Humanitarian agencies recently said erratic weather patterns in the region had devastated harvest prospects for millions of people and could spell another year of widespread food shortages.
