(Derna) Rescuers and volunteers are busy searching for thousands of people missing in Derna on Friday, after floods devastated the coastal town in eastern Libya.
The surge of water overnight from Sunday to Monday broke two dams upstream, causing a flash flood in the wadi that runs through the city and waves several meters high, residents reported.
According to an AFP photographer on site, the city center of Derna now resembles land flattened by a steamroller. Trees were uprooted, buildings and bridges destroyed.
The damage is considerable and the authorities fear a very heavy human toll in the city which had 100,000 inhabitants before the disaster.
PHOTO ABDULLAH DOMA, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
A rescue team is helped by dogs to find survivors in the rubble.
Ministers of the eastern Libyan government put forward different tolls, but exceeding 2,600 deaths, and the authorities fear that this figure will rise given the number of missing people.
Residents say hundreds of bodies still lie under tons of mud and rubble.
“The water was loaded with mud, trees, pieces of iron, the waves traveled for kilometers before invading the center of the city and carrying away or burying everything that was in their path,” testifies to AFP Abdelaziz Bousmya, 29, who lives in the Chiha district, spared from the floods.
“I lost friends, loved ones. They are either buried under the mud, or have been carried by the waves towards the sea,” he said, his voice choked with emotion, estimating that 10% of the city’s population perished.
According to him, the Libyan authorities did not take the necessary measures to protect themselves from the disaster, simply ordering residents to stay at home in anticipation of the storm Daniel, which fell on Turkey, Bulgaria and Greece before reaching the North African country on Sunday.
6000 body bags
Since then, dozens of bodies have been discovered every day and sometimes buried in mass graves. Others are still stuck in houses or have been swept towards the sea which has washed up dozens of them, raising fears of epidemics linked to the decomposition of corpses, according to health authorities.
PHOTO ESAM OMRAN AL-FETORI, REUTERS
Volunteers sort clothes for residents affected by the storm.
The number of body bags distributed in the city illustrates the extent of the tragedy. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) alone indicated that it had provided 6,000.
For its part, the World Food Program (WFP) announced that it had started providing food aid to more than 5,000 families displaced by the floods, specifying that thousands of families in Derna are “without food or shelter”.
The United Nations, the United States, the European Union and many countries in the Middle East and North Africa have promised to send aid. Foreign rescue teams are already at work searching for possible survivors.
Libya has been plunged into chaos since the death of dictator Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, with two rival governments, one recognized by the UN based in the capital Tripoli, in the west, the other in the eastern region affected by flooding.
PHOTO ABDULLAH DOMA, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
Cars stacked on top of each other bear witness to the force of the storm.
Derna found itself on several occasions under the control of Islamist and jihadist groups, before Marshal Khalifa Haftar, the strong man of eastern Libya, imposed a siege and a war of several months against these groups in 2018. .
Since then, it has been forces loyal to Mr. Haftar who have controlled the city, whose infrastructure had been damaged by the fighting.
Most of the deaths in Derna “could have been avoided”, said Petteri Taalas, head of the World Meteorological Organization which depends on the UN, on Thursday. Years of conflict in Libya have “largely destroyed the weather observation network”, as have the computer systems, he said in Geneva.