Rescue teams in Libya They work tirelessly to recover and bury the bodies of the flood victims in Derna, so that the tragedy is not compounded by a health crisis. The sea continues dumping corpses on the shore and two days after the dams broke and devastated the city, the full extent of the disaster is still unknown. The death toll from the floods has risen to 6,000 and thousands of people remain missing, Saadeddin Abdul Wakil, a health ministry official in Libya’s western government, told the Turkish Anadolu agency. Wakil pointed out that this is a “preliminary” figure and that it is expected to continue increasing as the rescue efforts progress. The authorities fear that some 10,000 people are missing although the confirmed death toll varies continuously due to the state division that Libya suffers, with two ruling entities in the western and eastern part of the country. For his part, Tariq Kharaz, spokesman for the eastern authority, confirmed that 3,200 bodies have been recovered and that a third of these have not yet been identified.
The images published on local channels show a city completely devastated, with buildings broken as if an earthquake had occurred. There are bodies wrapped in blankets piled up in the street. There is a shortage of drinking water, food and still no electricity. “The most important thing for the search teams is that we need bags to put the bodies in,” the head of the search teams, Lutfi al-Misrati, told Al Jazeera broadcaster. Derna residents have called for a new field hospital because the city’s two hospitals have become improvised morgues. The road network to access the city has collapsed due to flooding, slowing down the arrival of humanitarian aid. An evaluation by a technical committee estimates that a quarter of the city, with 150,000 inhabitants, would have been flooded, a total area of about 90 hectares.
The minister of civil aviation of the east of the country, Abu Chkiouatdeclared that they expect the death toll “to increase or even decrease.” double” and asked international aid because Libya does not have experience in dealing with this type of emergency. Although several countries have mobilized to send aid to Libya, resources arrive in dribs and drabs in proportion to the size of the disaster. Egypt, Turkey, Qatar, Kuwait have sent humanitarian aid and rescue teams. A Palestinian rescue team has also traveled to Libya to help with relief efforts. Italia has sent a team of flood experts, while France has sent a team of soldiers and doctors capable of treating 500 people a day. In a press conference on the social network He added that Libya is “a forgotten crisis” and called for more international help. “Like what happened a couple of days ago in Morocco, like what happened worldwide in Ukraine. It is important to support these crises, but Libya is no less important than them,” he warned.
Another of the great problems facing the eastern administration is the more than 30.000 personas that have been seen displaced in Derna and surrounding cities due to flooding, according to data from the International Organization for Migration (IOM).
Libya remains divided in two rival administrations: one in the western city of Tripoli, with the support of the United Nations and another operating in Sirte, under the influence of Marshal Khalifa Hafter. The Tripoli government is headed by Prime Minister Abdul Hamid Dbeibah, and the Sirte-based administration, supported by the country’s House of Representatives, suspended its former Prime Minister Fathi Bashagha in May. After the floods in Derna, there has been some detente between both governments. The health minister of the western part, Othman Abdul Jalil, has traveled to Derna to assess the flood situation and send aid. “The situation in the city is miserable“, he told the Turkish agency Anadolu.