Residents of the devastated Libyan city of Derna desperately searched for missing relatives as rescue workers appealed for more body bags after a catastrophic flood that killed thousands of people and swept many out to sea.
Parts of the Mediterranean city were devastated by a flood of water triggered by a powerful storm that swept down a normally dry riverbed on Sunday night and burst dams over the city. Multi-story buildings with sleeping families inside collapsed.
Interior Ministry spokesman Lieutenant Tarek al-Kharraz told AFP on Wednesday that 3,840 deaths had been recorded in the Mediterranean city so far, including 3,190 who were already buried. Among them were at least 400 foreigners, mainly from Sudan and Egypt.
Meanwhile, Hichem Abu Chkiouat, civil aviation minister in the government that governs eastern Libya, told Portal that more than 5,300 deaths had been counted so far and that the number was likely to rise significantly and even double.
Derna Mayor Abdulmenam al-Ghaithi told Saudi television channel Al Arabiya that the estimated death toll in the city could be between 18,000 and 20,000, based on the number of districts destroyed by the flood.
A glance shows a damaged car [Esam Omran Al-Fetori/Reuters]
Derna resident Mahmoud Abdulkarim told journalist Moutaz Ali in Tripoli that he lost his mother and brother after he could not be evacuated from their first-floor apartment in time following the collapse of a dam.
“She refused to leave her apartment…couldn’t imagine the situation would be terrible and told him so [Abdulkarim] It was normal rain,” said Ali, speaking at an event organized for the Derwani community in Tripoli.
According to Abdulkarim, when his mother and brother decided to leave their apartment for good, they were swept away by the floodwaters as they reached the street to escape.
Mabrooka Elmesmary, a journalist who managed to leave Derna on Tuesday, describes the city as a “disaster of enormous proportions”. “There is no water, no electricity, no petrol,” she told Al Jazeera. “The city is leveled.”
Apartment buildings with families in them were washed away, she said. “There is a wave of displacement as people try to flee Derna, but many are stuck because many roads are blocked or no longer exist,” Elmesmary said, adding that some families had sought refuge in schools.
Officials put the number of missing people at 10,000. The UN aid agency OCHA put the number at at least 5,000.
The beach was littered with clothing, toys, furniture, shoes and other possessions that had been washed away from homes by the current.
The roads were covered in deep mud and littered with uprooted trees and hundreds of wrecked cars, many of which fell on their sides or roofs. A car was wedged on the second floor balcony of a gutted building.
The devastation is clearly visible in the high places above Derna, where the densely populated city center, built along a seasonal riverbed, was now a wide, flat crescent of earth with patches of muddy water glistening in the sun. Buildings were washed away.
Rescue measures
Rescue teams arrived from Egypt, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates, Turkey and Qatar, said Derna Mayor al-Ghaithi.
“We actually need teams that specialize in recovering bodies,” he said. “I fear that an epidemic will hit the city due to the large number of bodies under the rubble and in the water.”
Reporting from Benghazi, Al Jazeera’s Charles Stratford said a field hospital was part of Qatar’s contribution to what appears to be a growing international aid effort for Libya.
“This is one of three Qatari military cargo planes expected to arrive in Benghazi today,” Stratford said.
Members of the Libyan Red Crescent rescue vehicles from the floods [Handout/Libya Red Crescent via EPA]
The aid also includes “medical equipment, medicine, food, tents,” Stratford said. “All aid will be brought to Derna as quickly as possible.”
Additionally, Al Jazeera’s Malik Traina, reporting from Tripoli, said there had been an outpouring of support from Libyans themselves from across the country.
“We haven’t seen this kind of unity here in the country for many years,” Traina said.
In the east, large government convoys carrying equipment from western Libya have arrived, he said. Volunteer convoys with support are also on their way east.
“We are now also seeing volunteers and people giving what they can – water, food, medicine, whatever they can.”
Rescue operations are complicated by deep political divisions in the country of seven million people, which has no strong central government and has been at war since a NATO-backed uprising that toppled Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.
An internationally recognized Government of National Unity (GNU) is based in Tripoli in the west, while a parallel government, including Derna, operates in the east.
There was criticism of the local authorities in eastern Libya, including in Derna. Some said locals were not informed that they would have to evacuate before the flood of water flowed through the city.
However, al-Ghaithi insisted on Wednesday that residents were informed before the flooding.
“We have taken all precautions and informed the … residents of the areas where the disaster could have happened, we have set up an emergency room … the security forces have done their duty,” he said.
Additional reporting from Moutaz Ali in Tripoli