At least 5,000 people have died, and many more are missing. On Wednesday, the eastern Libyan city of Derna tallied hundreds of dead and expected a far higher toll when two dams failed under the strain of severe rains, releasing tremendous floodwaters that swept away everything in their path.
Given the restricted access to this 100,000-person town, officials are dubious about the number of victims of the accident, which may have killed or missing several thousand people.
Roads were cut off, and landslides and floods prevented rescue agencies from reaching the populace, who had to rely on crude equipment to remove dead buried by the dozen in mass graves, according to photographs shared on social media.
Despite attempts by authorities to restore mobile phone and internet networks, Derna and other towns remain essentially shut off from the rest of the world.
Authorities in the east and its opponents in the west are both claiming “thousands” of dead.
Osama Ali, spokesperson for Libya’s “Emergency and Rescue Service” under the internationally recognized government in Tripoli, told AFP on Tuesday that the floods had left “more than 2,300 dead” and 7,000 injured in Derna, with over 5,000 people missing.
The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) estimated a “huge” death toll that might number in the thousands, with 10,000 people still missing.
This is the largest natural disaster to strike Libya’s eastern region of Cyrenaica since the 1963 earthquake that devastated the town of al-Marj.
Storm Daniel made landfall on Libya’s eastern coast on Sunday afternoon, striking the capital of Benghazi before moving east into the cities of the Jabal al-Akhdar (northeast), including Shahat (Cyrene), al-Marj, al-Bayda, and Soussa (Apollonia), but most notably Derna, the most destroyed city.
The two dams on Wadi Derna, which keep back the waters of the wadi that flows through the city, burst on Sunday night.
Witnesses informed Libyan media that they heard a “huge explosion” before violent rains hit the city, flooding the riverbanks and sweeping bridges and entire neighborhoods into the Mediterranean.
