13th September, 2023
More than 5,300 people have died after floods in the Libyan city of Derna, a local minister said today.
The number could double, Hichem Abu Chkiouat, minister of civil aviation, for Libyan eastern administration said.
He gave the update as rescuers found more than 5000 bodies as of Wednesday in the wreckage of the Libyan city of Derna where floodwaters broke dams and washed away neighbourhoods.
Mediterranean storm Daniel caused deadly flooding in many eastern towns, but the worst-hit was Derna.
As the storm pounded the coast Sunday night, Derna residents said they heard loud explosions when the dams outside the city collapsed.
Floodwaters washed down Wadi Derna, a river running from the mountains through the city and into the sea.
More than 2,000 corpses were collected as of Wednesday morning and over half of them had been buried in mass graves in Derna, said eastern Libya’s health minister, Othman Abduljaleel.
Rescue teams were working day and night to recover many other bodies scattered in the streets and under the rubble in the city. Some bodies were retrieved from the sea.
The startling devastation pointed to the storm’s intensity, but also Libya’s vulnerability.
The country is divided by rival governments, one in the east, the other in the west, and the result has been neglect of infrastructure in many areas.
The floods damaged or destroyed many access roads to Derna, hampering the arrival of international rescue teams and humanitarian assistance to tens of thousands of people whose homes were destroyed or damaged.
“The city of Derna was submerged by waves 7 meters (23 feet) high that destroyed everything in their path,” Yann Fridez, head of the delegation of the International Committee for The Red Cross in Libya, told France24. “The human toll is enormous.”
Local emergency responders, including troops, government workers, volunteers and residents, continued digging through rubble looking for the dead.
They also used inflatable boats and helicopters to retrieve bodies from the water and inaccessible areas.
“This is a disaster of every sense of the word,” a wailing survivor who lost 11 members of his family told a local television station as a group of rescuers tried to calm him. The television station did not identify the survivor.