- Storm Daniel hits a country crumbling from conflict
- According to the hospital director, the death toll is 2,200
- In Derna, dams burst and destroyed parts of the city
- According to the UN, emergency teams are being mobilized on site
DERNA, Libya, Sept 12 (Portal) – More than 2,000 people were killed and at least 10,000 missing in Libya in floods caused by a powerful Mediterranean storm that blew out dams, swept away buildings and wiped out up to a quarter of the eastern Mediterranean Coastal town of Derna.
Officials expected the death toll to rise even further after Storm Daniel barreled across the Mediterranean into a country divided and crumbling after more than a decade of conflict.
In Derna, a city of around 125,000 people, Portal journalists saw neighborhoods destroyed, their buildings washed away and cars overturned on their roofs.
Mohamad al-Qabisi, director of Wahda Hospital, said 1,700 people had died in one of the city’s two districts and 500 in the other.
Portal journalists saw many bodies lying on the floor in the hospital hallways. As more bodies were brought to the hospital, people examined them and tried to identify missing family members.
“There are bodies everywhere – in the sea, in the valleys, under the buildings,” Hichem Abu Chkiouat, civil aviation minister in the administration that controls the east, told Portal by telephone shortly after his visit to Derna.
“I am not exaggerating when I say that 25% of the city has disappeared. Many, many buildings collapsed.”
Abu Chkiouat later told Al Jazeera that he expected the total number of deaths across the country to reach more than 2,500 as the number of missing people rose.
Other eastern cities, including Libya’s second largest city Benghazi, were also hit by the storm. Tamer Ramadan, head of a delegation from the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, said the death toll would be “huge.”
“We can confirm from our independent sources of information that the number of missing people so far is 10,000,” he told reporters via video link.
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said emergency teams had been mobilized to help on the ground.
While Turkey and other countries quickly provided aid to Libya, including search and rescue vehicles, rescue boats, generators and food, desperate Derna citizens rushed home in search of their loved ones.
Portal graphics
“Never felt so scared”
[1/8]A view shows damaged cars in Derna, Libya, after a strong storm and heavy rains, September 12, 2023. Portal/Esam Omran Al-Fetori ACQUIRES LICENSE RIGHTS
In Derna, 39-year-old Mostafa Salem said he lost 30 of his relatives. “Most people were sleeping. Nobody was ready,” Salem told Portal.
Raja Sassi, 39, survived the flooding with his wife and young daughter after the water reached an upper floor, but the rest of his family died, he said.
“At first we just thought it was raining heavily, but at midnight we heard a huge explosion and the dam burst,” he said.
At Tripoli airport in northwest Libya, a woman cried as she received a call telling her that most of her family was dead or missing. Her brother-in-law Walid Abdulati said: “We are not talking about one or two dead, but up to ten dead family members.”
Karim al-Obaidi, a passenger on a plane from Tripoli to the east, said: “I have never felt so scared as I do now… I have lost contact with all my family, friends and neighbors.”
An Interior Ministry spokesman told Al Jazeera that naval teams were searching for “the many families washed into the sea in the city of Derna.”
FLOOD WARNING
Derna is intersected by a seasonal river that flows south from the highlands and is usually protected from flooding by dams.
A video posted on social media showed remnants of a collapsed dam 11.5 km (7 miles) upstream of the city where two river valleys converged, now surrounded by vast pools of mud-colored water.
“There used to be a dam,” a voice can be heard in the video. Portal confirmed the location based on the images.
In a research report published last year, hydrologist Abdelwanees AR Ashoor of Libya’s Omar Al-Mukhtar University said repeated flooding of the seasonal riverbed, the wadi, posed a threat to Derna. He cited five floods since 1942 and called for immediate action to ensure regular maintenance of the dams.
“If a major flood occurs, the result would be catastrophic for the people of the wadi and the city,” the paper said.
Pope Francis was among world leaders who said they were deeply saddened by the deaths and destruction in Libya. US President Joe Biden expressed his condolences and said Washington was sending emergency funds to aid organizations.
Libya is politically divided between East and West and public services have collapsed since a NATO-backed uprising in 2011 that sparked years of factional conflict.
The internationally recognized government in Tripoli does not control the eastern areas but has sent aid to Derna, with at least one aid flight departing from the western city of Misrata on Tuesday, a Portal journalist on the plane said.
Reporting by Tarek Amara in Tunisia, Ayman Werfali near Derna and Ahmed Elumami in Al Bayda; additional reporting by Laila Bassam, Friedrieke Heine, Angus McDowall, Gabrielle Tétrault-Farber, Clauda Tanios, Jana Choukeir, Gavin Jones and Emma Farge; writing by Tom Perry, Ingrid Melander and Alex Richardson; Edited by Mark Heinrich and Angus MacSwan
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