International aid to Libya stepped up on Thursday after devastating tsunami-like floods in the east of the country left thousands dead and missing, a toll the UN attributes in part to the legacy of years of war and chaos.
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However, access to the disaster area remains very difficult after the destruction of roads and bridges, damage to power and telephone lines in large parts of the area, leaving at least 30,000 people homeless.
The flood of water on Sunday night broke two dams upstream in Derna, causing a flash flood the size of a tsunami.
The damage is enormous in the coastal city of 100,000 residents, where entire blocks of houses, cars and countless people were washed into the Mediterranean.
Uncertainties remain about the death toll. The Libyan authorities’ assessments vary from official to official. While the spokesman for the Interior Ministry of the eastern government reported more than 3,840 deaths on Wednesday, the minister himself, Issam Bouznigua, spoke a few hours later of 2,794 deaths in Derna and other cities in the east.
On Thursday, traumatized residents, divers, rescuers and volunteers continued to pull bodies from the rubble or fish them out to sea. Hundreds of bodies have already been buried since the disaster, some in mass graves.