BENGHAZI: At least 2,300 people were killed in eastern Libya, and thousands of others were reported missing after devastating flash floods broke river dams and tore through an eastern coastal city, destroying entire neighbourhoods.
As international concern spread, several nations offered to urgently send rescue and aid teams to help the country that has been overwhelmed by what one UN official declared “a calamity of epic proportions”.
Huge destruction shattered the Mediterranean coastal city of Derna, where tall buildings on the river banks collapsed, and cars and houses vanished in the flash floods.
According to the Libyan emergency services, the initial death toll is over 2,300 in Derna alone, and more than 5,000 persons are missing, while around 7,000 were wounded.
According to the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), storm Daniel have left at least 10,000 people missing, and the death toll is feared to increase.
Officials in Libya initially reported that at least 150 people lost their lives due to the sudden and devastating flooding on Sunday. However, Tamer Ramadan of the IFRC has cautioned that the actual extent of the tragedy is likely far greater than currently known.
“Our teams on the ground are still doing their assessment, but from what we see and from the news coming to us, the death toll is huge,” Ramadan revealed during a press conference in Geneva. “It might reach into the thousands; we don’t have a definite number right now.”
Independent sources have informed the IFRC that the number of people reported missing has surged to a staggering 10,000 individuals so far.
Libya Issued International Appeal for Support
Ramadan further emphasized that the humanitarian needs resulting from this disaster have surpassed the capacities of both the Libyan Red Crescent and the government. As a result, the eastern Libyan government has issued an international appeal for support, while the IFRC is preparing to launch an emergency appeal for funds to aid in the response efforts.
The World Health Organization’s spokeswoman, Margaret Harris, has described the situation in Libya as “a calamity of epic proportions.”
Storm Daniel, which wreaked havoc across parts of Bulgaria, Greece, and Turkey, killed at least 27 people in its wake. Experts have characterized the storm as “extreme in terms of the amount of water falling in a space of 24 hours.”
In eastern Libya, the coastal town of Jabal al-Akhdar and Benghazi were particularly hard-hit. A curfew was declared in Benghazi, and schools remained closed for several days.
The United Nations’ World Meteorological Organization (WMO) reported that “entire neighborhoods” in Derna had vanished, with their inhabitants swept away by water, after two aging dams collapsed, leading to a catastrophic and uncontrollable situation.
Prime Minister Oussama Hamad, speaking on the Libyan network Almasar, reported “more than 2,000 dead and thousands missing” in the city of Derna alone. While these figures have not been confirmed by medical sources or emergency services, Tamer Ramadan acknowledged that it seemed “very likely that the number declared by the eastern official could be close to the correct number.”
The IFRC is working diligently to provide a more precise estimate of the disaster’s toll as more information becomes available.
