Derna Flood Causes Major Death Toll Increase to Over 5,100

Following disastrous floods that left at least 5,100 people dead, the Libyan city of Derna buried thousands of victims in mass graves while search teams combed the region, a health official said on Thursday.

Spanish hurricane Many eastern towns were devastated by Daniel’s fatal floods, but Derna was particularly hard impacted.

Residents of Derna reported hearing huge explosions as the dams outside the city collapsed as the storm battered the coast Sunday night. Floodwaters swept over the city’s Wadi Derna valley, causing houses to collapse and people to be carried out to sea.

As of Wednesday, 5,100 deaths have been reported in Derna, according to health officials. According to Ossama Ali, a spokeswoman for an ambulance center in eastern Libya, the death toll will probably rise given that at least 9,000 individuals are still unaccounted for.

According to the UN’s International Organization for Migration, at least 30,000 people have been pushed out of their homes in Derna as a result of the floods, and thousands more have been compelled to flee their homes in other eastern cities.

Many of the access routes to Derna were damaged or destroyed by the floods, which delayed the arrival of foreign rescue crews and humanitarian aid.

The shocking destruction was a reflection of both the storm’s power and Libya’s susceptibility. Rival regimes that control opposite halves of the nation—one in the east and the other in the west—have caused significant infrastructure disrepair. According to local media, the dams outside of Derna were constructed in the 1970s but have been neglected for many years.

According to Othman Abduljaleel, the health minister for eastern Libya, more than 3,000 dead had been buried by Thursday morning and 2,000 more were still being identified. He said that although some of the deceased were moved to neighbouring towns and cities, the most were interred in mass graves outside of Derna.

Rescue workers, he said, were still looking inside collapsed buildings in the heart of the city and diving off Derna.

According to the health minister, the storm killed almost 170 people when it struck cities including Bayda, Susa, Um Razaz, and Marj in eastern Libya.

At least 84 Egyptians were among the deceased in eastern Libya; they were repatriated on Wednesday. One community in the southern province of Beni Suef provided more than 70 people. Numerous migrants from Sudan were reportedly murdered in the incident, according to Libyan media.