2023-09-14 03:47:49
Caption,
Relatives search for the bodies of their loved ones to bury them.
Article informationAuthor, RedacciónRole, BBC News Mundo
3 hours
The images are devastating. Corpses abandoned in the streets, people pulling bodies out from under the rubble with their bare hands.
Direct witnesses to the horror told the BBC that entire neighborhoods and buildings were swept into the sea while people slept.
And now “the sea is returning dozens of bodies,” said Hichem Abu Chkiouat, Minister of Civil Aviation and member of the Emergency Committee in eastern Libya.
That is the situation experienced in the port city of Derna following the floods caused by Storm Daniel that devastated the east of the country, leaving a trail of destruction with thousands of dead and missing.
Relatives desperately search for their loved ones in the hope of finding them alive or at least identifying their bodies for burial.
As emergency teams continue to work, in some areas of the city bodies wrapped in sheets are being dumped in mass graves.
The death toll from flooding in eastern Libya continues to rise. Authorities say more than 5,000 bodies have been found in the city of Derna alone, while tens of thousands are already displaced in the surrounding area and in the rest of the country.
Volunteers have arrived in the area to help survivors.
“It’s a complete disaster. I’m really shocked,” said a doctor who traveled to Derna to treat the wounded.
“As if a nuclear bomb had fallen”
image copyrightGetty Images
Caption,
Entire buildings and neighborhoods were swept into the sea.
Local media outlet Derna Zoom posted on the social network X (formerly Twitter) that a quarter of the city was “completely annihilated.”
“It’s like a nuclear bomb has fallen,” the message said.
Those who have managed to communicate with family and friends in the affected area are heartbroken.
People are experiencing “doomsday,” Libyan journalist Johr Ali told the BBC.
A friend found his nephew “dead in the street, thrown by water from his roof,” the reporter said.
Ali, who lives in exile in Istanbul due to attacks on journalists in Libya, said another of his friends lost his entire family in the disaster.
“His mother, his father, his two brothers, his sister Maryam, his wife (…) and his little 8-month-old son… They all died, his whole family is dead and he asks me what he should do.”
In another case, Ali said a survivor told him that he had seen “a woman hanging from the streetlights, because the floods took her away.”
“He died there,” Ali added.
The streets of Derna are covered in mud and debris and littered with overturned vehicles.
“People hear the cries of babies underground and don’t know how to get to them,” the journalist said.
“It looked like a tsunami”
Caption,
The rains “dragged entire neighborhoods with their residents into the sea.”
Rescuer Kasim al Qatani told the BBC that there is no drinking water in Derna and medical supplies are in short supply.
He added that Derna’s only hospital might no longer receive patients because “there are more than 700 bodies waiting in the hospital and it is not that big.”
Although the tragedy began with the intense rains caused by Storm Daniel, witnesses said the situation got out of control when they heard the explosion of a large dam that ended up expelling a gigantic torrent of water that “looked like a tsunami.”
The information available so far indicates that the rains caused the collapse of two dams on the Derna River, “which dragged entire neighborhoods with their residents into the sea,” according to Ahmed Mismari, spokesman for the Libyan National Army, which controls the east of the country. .
In addition to Derna, the cities of Benghazi, Susa and Al Marj, all in the east, as well as Misrata, in the west, have also been affected, amid the worst floods in the last four decades in the country.
A country divided in two
image copyrightGetty Images
Caption,
Rescue teams are working intensively in areas devastated by floods.
Libyan doctor Najib Tarhoni, who works at a hospital near Derna, urgently called for help.
“I have friends here in hospital who have lost most of their families… they have lost everyone,” he told the BBC.
“We just need people who understand the situation: logistical help, dogs that can really smell people and pull them out from under the ground. We just need humanitarian help, people who really know what they are doing.”
There is also an urgent need for specialized forensic and rescue teams and others dedicated to recovering bodies, the head of the Libyan Doctors’ Union, Mohammed al Ghoush, told Turkish media.
Rescue efforts have been complicated by the fact that Libya is divided between rival governments and the country has been in conflict for more than a decade.
Factional fighting has led to the abandonment of infrastructure and resulted in widespread poverty in a country with few resources and experience to deal with such catastrophes.
image copyrightGetty Images
Caption,
Victims and rescuers ask for humanitarian help.
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