The flood death toll in eastern Libya’s city of Derna has surpassed 5,100, a health official says

DERNA, Libya (AP) — The death toll from flooding that hit the eastern Libyan city of Derna reached more than 5,000 and was expected to rise further, a local health official said Wednesday, as authorities struggled to get aid to the coastal city where thousands remained missing and tens of thousands were homeless.

Aid workers who managed to reach the city, which was cut off Sunday night when flash floods washed away most of the access roads, described devastation in the city’s center, where search and rescue teams combed shattered apartment buildings for bodies and retrieved floating bodies offshore.

 

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“Bodies are everywhere, inside houses, in the streets, at sea. Wherever you go, you find dead men, women, and children,” Emad al-Falah, an aid worker from Benghazi, said over the phone from Derna. “Entire families were lost.”

Mediterranean storm Daniel caused deadly flooding in many towns of eastern Libya, but the worst-hit was Derna. As the storm pounded the coast Sunday, residents said they heard loud explosions when the dams outside the city collapsed. Floodwaters washed down Wadi Derna, a river running from the mountains through the city and into the sea.

“The city of Derna was submerged by waves 7 meters (23 feet) high that destroyed everything in their path,” Yann Fridez, head of the delegation of the International Committee of the Red Cross in Libya, told broadcaster France24. “The human toll is enormous.”

Derna lies on a narrow coastal plain on the Mediterranean under steep mountains running along the coast. Only two roads from the south remain usable, and they involve a long, winding route through the mountains.

Aid teams with some supplies managed to get in that way, but local emergency workers otherwise were relying on whatever equipment they already had on hand. Collapsed bridges split the city center, further hampering movements.

Ossama Ali, a spokesman for the Ambulance and Emergency Center in eastern Libya, said at least 5,100 deaths were recorded in Derna, along with around 100 others elsewhere in eastern Libya. More than 7,000 people were injured in the city, most receiving treatment in field hospitals that authorities and aid agencies set up, he told The Associated Press by phone on Wednesday.

The number of deaths is likely to increase since search and rescue teams are still collecting bodies from the streets, buildings and the sea, he said.

At least 30,000 people in Derna were displaced by the flooding, the U.N. migration agency said. The damage is so extensive that the city is almost inaccessible for humanitarian aid workers, the International Organization for Migration said.

The startling devastation pointed to the storm’s intensity, but also Libya’s vulnerability. The country is divided by rival governments, one in the east, the other in the west, and the result has been neglect of infrastructure in many areas.

“This is a disaster of every sense of the word,” a wailing survivor who lost 11 members of his family told a local television station as a group of rescuers tried to calm him. The television station did not identify the survivor.

Ahmed Abdalla, a survivor who joined the search and rescue effort, said they were putting bodies in the yard of a local hospital before taking them for burial in mass graves at the city’s sole intact cemetery.

“The situation is indescribable. Entire families dead in this disaster. Some were washed away to the sea,” Abdalla said by phone from Derna.

Bulldozers worked over the past two days to fix and clear roads to allow the delivery of humanitarian aid and heavy equipment urgently needed for the search and rescue operations. Derna is 250 kilometers (150 miles) east of Benghazi, where international aid started to arrive on Tuesday.

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