This is the Global News podcast from the BBC World Service.

I'm Alex Ritson, and in the early hours of Monday, the 16th of December, these are our main stories.

Hundreds, possibly as many as a few thousand people, are feared dead in Cyclone hit Mayotte,

where survivors say they're facing drastic conditions.

The UN envoy for Syria has called for a swift end to sanctions on his first visit to Damascus

since the rebel takeover. A former Israeli Prime Minister says Benjamin Netanyahu's plans

to expand settlements in the occupied Golan Heights are an unnecessary confrontation with post-Assad Syria.

Also in this podcast,

I'm interrogated 10 to 12 hours every day.

The jailer would knock on the cell door and say,

Do you hear that?

They're beating them.

Be ready.

You're next.

Men molest you here and no one cares.

The previously unheard stories of women inside Iran's notorious Evan prison.

Let's begin in the French overseas territory of Mayotte, just a tiny collection of dots in the Indian Ocean between Madagascar and

Mozambique. It's home to around 300,000 people who've just endured one of the worst storms on the

archipelago in nearly 100 years. In our earlier podcast, we quoted French media reports

from soon after the cyclone made landfall on Saturday, stating that four people had been found dead.

Now, as we record this podcast, authorities in Mayotte are warning that the death toll from Cyclone Cheado will be in the hundreds, if not the thousands.

The storm spared no one and nothing. Homes, boats and schools were all

...