A week after the floods that claimed thousands of lives in the city of Derna on the coast of eastern Libya, Libyan ambulance services, with the support of foreign teams, continue today, Sunday, to search for thousands of people missing as a result of the disaster.
Journalists in Derna confirmed that the scenes in the city, which was home to 100,000 people, confirm that a disaster had passed by: bridges split in half, overturned cars and smashed trucks, electricity poles and trees uprooted, and personal belongings mixed with mud.
Libyan Muhammad Al-Zawi (25 years old), who lives in a house near the beach in Derna, said that on the night of the disaster he saw “a large cliff of water bringing with it cars, people, and belongings, and people inside cars, and then pouring everything into the sea.”
A spokesman for the Libyan Red Crescent denied on Sunday that the death toll from the floods that struck the city of Derna had reached 11,300 people, after the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs had reported this toll, attributing the numbers to the Libyan Red Crescent.
Spokesman Tawfiq Shukri, from the city of Benghazi in the east of the country, said, “To be honest, we are surprised that our name has been included in such statistics even though we did not declare these numbers,” considering that they “confuse the situation, especially the families of missing people.” So far, more than 3,000 people have been confirmed dead. But Libyan experts and officials fear that the toll will be higher.
– “I saw death”
On September 10, the storm “Daniel” struck eastern Libya, accompanied by heavy rains, causing the collapse of two dams at the top of Derna, causing the river that crosses the city to suddenly overflow, causing tsunami-like waters to flow, sweeping away all buildings, bridges, and roads in its path, causing thousands of deaths.
Libyan and foreign relief teams announce daily the discovery of bodies, but the tons of mud that have covered part of the city make search operations difficult. Maltese paramedics assisting Libyans in search operations at sea saw hundreds of bodies in a bay, according to what the newspaper “Time of Malta” reported, without specifying the exact location.
Amid the devastation that has spread across the city, bodies are recovered every day from under the rubble of destroyed neighborhoods or from the sea. According to residents, most of the victims were buried under mud or washed into the Mediterranean Sea.
Muhammad Abdel Hafeez (50 years old), a Lebanese who has lived for decades in Derna, said, “I saw death, but life has a rest.” He narrated that he was sleeping when he felt that “the world shook,” stressing that he thought an earthquake was occurring. He added, “I went out to the balcony and saw that the water had reached us,” noting that he lives on the third floor.
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