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At a Glance A UN report put the humanitarian crisis on par with a war zone.

Rescue workers say thousands of victims may have been washed out to sea.

A top U.S. general has arrived in Mozambique to begin coordinating relief efforts.

The United Nations has declared an emergency in cyclone-ravaged southern Africa as some 600,000 people have been displaced and the humanitarian crisis continues to worsen , according to a U.N. World Food Program report obtained by the New York Times.

The level three emergency declaration puts the situation on par with war-torn Yemen, Syria and South Sudan, the Times reported.

The Times also cited rescue workers who said thousands of additional victims might have been swept out to sea and it's unlikely their bodies will ever be found.

U​.S. military officials, meanwhile, began to arrive in the area to help coordinate relief efforts. The Associated Press reported that U.S. Army Maj. Gen. James Craig, commanding general of the Combined Joint Task Force - Horn of Africa, was in Mozambique today. The general met with the U.S. ambassador as well as representatives from the U.S. Agency for International Development.

"We are responding as quickly and safely as possible to help bring relief from the devastation," Craig said.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, pleading with international officials to provide emergency aid, called it "one of the worst weather-related catastrophes in the history of Africa."

(MORE: Idai Becomes Africa's Hurricane Katrina)

Authorities said on Monday that the opening of a key road to the cyclone-ravaged Mozambique city of Beira meant aid might finally begin to reach those who need it most.

Ten days after Cyclone Idai slammed into southern Africa, workers are rushing to restore electricity and water and trying to prevent cholera outbreaks.

About 228,000 people driven from their homes by flooding are now in camps, Mozambique's environment minister Celso Correia told reporters on Monday.

The death toll has risen to 783 in the three countries impacted by the storm: Mozambique, Malawi and Zimbabwe. That includes 468 confirmed deaths in Mozambique, 259 in Zimbabwe and 56 in Malawi.

According to Dr. Jeff Masters of Weather Underground, Idai is now the third-deadliest tropical cyclone to strike the Southern Hemisphere since record-keeping began.

Half of the 1.8 million people impacted by the cyclone — 900,000 — are children who have been orphaned or separated from their families, made homeless or otherwise affected by the storm and its aftermath, Mozambican government figures revealed.

<img class="styles__noscript__2rw2y" src="https://s.w-x.co/util/image/w/AP19084674356515.jpg?v=at&w=485&h=273" srcset="https://s.w-x.co/util/image/w/AP19084674356515.jpg?v=at&w=485&h=273 400w, https://s.w-x.co/util/image/w/AP19084674356515.jpg?v=ap&w=980&h=551 800w" > A young girl plays in the water outside a school in Beira, Mozambique, Monday, March 25, 2019. (AP Photo/Themba Hadebe)

The Red Cross has reported the first cases of cholera in hard-hit Beira, and Correia warned that malaria is "unavoidable" because large expanses of standing water encourage the spread of malaria-carrying mosquitoes.

Sebastian Rhodes Stampa, deputy director of the U.N. Humanitarian operation, confirmed the reports of diarrhea in the camps. "It's a killer," he told the AP.

Stampa told journalists on Monday that "a lot more assistance" should be seen today as more aid arrives at staging areas like the Beira airport.

He said the government is repairing key roads just enough to allow aid and other trucks to have access, with repair crews on hand when problems arise. They are being repaired "for now, and that's good enough," Stampa said.

Military personnel with U.S. Africa Command were on the way to Mozambique Monday to assist with aid efforts, the Pentagon announced. The command's Djibouti-based Combined Joint Task Force – Horn of Africa will be in charge of the military’s relief effort , Stars and Stripes reported.

The command has been authorized to spend up to $6.5 million in relief funds to provide logistics support for up to 10 days, the report said. The military’s role will be to assist the U.S. Agency for International Development in the delivery of humanitarian assistance.

The Pain of the Children Who Survived

No one has a count of how many children have lost one or both parents. At least 12 of the kids in a bare gym in the Samora Machel secondary school in Beira are orphans, said Juta Joao Sithole, who represents about 350 people from the town of Buzi who shelter there.

The orphans are very young, he said, 4, 5, and 7 years old. They remind Sithole of his own children, ages 9 and 7, who are still at home in Buzi.

<img class="styles__noscript__2rw2y" src="https://s.w-x.co/util/image/w/AP19083748719648.jpg?v=at&w=485&h=273" srcset="https://s.w-x.co/util/image/w/AP19083748719648.jpg?v=at&w=485&h=273 400w, https://s.w-x.co/util/image/w/AP19083748719648.jpg?v=ap&w=980&h=551 800w" > Displaced children, victims of Cyclone Idai, eat lunch at the Samora Machel Secondary School which is being used to house victims of the floods in Beira, Mozambique, Sunday, March 24, 2019. (AP Photo/Phill Magakoe)

He says he has no answers for the orphans, so he tries to deflect their questions.

"When they ask about their parents, I tell them, 'Please keep quiet,'" he said. He tells them stories and jokes instead.

It is too difficult to talk about death. "Children are children," he said. "They don't know anything. I treat them like my own."

Many other Mozambican children now know hunger and homelessness, and the growing risk of disease.

In the Agostinho Neto primary school in Beira, 270 children displaced by the cyclone live in classrooms, all of them thought to have lost at least one guardian. They play beneath the remains of a collapsed roof, its beams now hung with drying clothes.

"It's sad. It hurts me to see families sleeping 10 people together, separated by desks," said Saoundina Tempe, a manager there with Mozambique's disaster management agency. "Newborns, pregnant women. Their lives are in jeopardy because of disease, being together in the same place."

In Beira, 30-year-old Marta Benis grabbed her five children when the cyclone destroyed their house. Now, they make their home on the city's sidewalks along with many other young mothers.

On Friday Benis and the children marked a week on the sidewalk. They now beg to get by.

"If people give," she said simply, "we receive."

Information from the Associated Press was included in this report.