DERNA, Libya: Survivors of a flood that swept away the centre of the Libyan city of Derna picked through the ruins on Thursday in search of loved ones from among thousands of dead and missing, while authorities feared an outbreak of disease from rotting bodies.
A torrent unleashed by a powerful storm burst dams on Sunday night and hurtled down a seasonal riverbed that bisects the city, washing multi-storey buildings into the sea with sleeping families inside.
Confirmed death tolls given by officials have varied, all are in the thousands, with thousands more on lists of the missing. Derna Mayor Abdulmenam al Ghaithi said deaths in the city could already reach 18,000-20,000, based on the extent of the damage.
“We actually need teams specialised in recovering bodies,” he said in Derna. “I fear that the city will be infected with an epidemic due to the large number of bodies under the rubble and in the water.”
The World Meteorological Organization said the huge loss of life could have been avoided if Libya — a failed state for more than a decade — had a functioning weather agency.
“If they would have been a normally operating meteorological service, they could have issued warnings,” WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalashe said in Geneva. “The emergency management authorities would have been able to carry out evacuation of the people. And we could have avoided most of the human casualties.”
Usama Al Husadi, a 52-year-old driver, had been searching for his wife and five children since the disaster.
“I went by foot searching for them ... I went to all hospitals and schools but no luck,” he said, weeping with his head in his hands.
Al Husadi, who had been working the night of the storm, dialled his wife’s phone number once again. It was switched off.
“We lost at least 50 members from my father’s family, between missing and dead,” he said.
Wali Eddin Mohamed Adam, 24, a Sudanese brick factory worker living on Derna’s outskirts, had awakened to the boom of the water on the night of the storm and rushed to the city centre to find it was gone. Nine of his fellow workers were lost, and around 15 others had lost their families, he said.
“All were swept away by the valley into the sea,” he said. “May God have mercy upon them and grant them heaven.”
Rescue teams arrived from Egypt, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates, Turkiye and Qatar. Among countries sending aid, Turkiye sent a ship carrying equipment to set up two field hospitals. Italy sent three planes of supplies and personnel, as well as two navy ships that had difficulty offloading because Derna’s debris-choked port was almost unusable.
Rescue work is hindered by the political fractures in a country of 7 million people, at war on-and-off and with no government holding nationwide reach since a Nato-backed uprising toppled Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.
An internationally recognised Government of National Unity (GNU) is based in Tripoli, in the west. A parallel administration operates in the east, under control of the Libyan National Army of Khalifa Haftar, who failed to capture Tripoli in a bloody 14-month siege that unravelled in 2020.
Derna has been particularly chaotic, run by a succession of armed Islamist groups, including at one point Islamic State, before being uneasily brought under Haftar’s control.
A delegation of GNU ministers were expected in Benghazi in the east on Thursday to show solidarity and discuss relief efforts, a rare occurance since the eastern-based parliament rejected their administration last year.
— Reuters
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