Aid workers have discovered hundreds of bodies in the rubble of Libya’s eastern city of Derna. The toll is feared to rise further, with 10,000 people still reported missing after waters from Storm Daniel burst through dams and washed away entire neighborhoods.
More than 1,000 bodies have been collected, including at least 700 that have been buried so far, eastern Libya’s health minister said. The Derna ambulance service estimates the current death toll at 2,300.
Images showed dozens of bodies covered in blankets in a hospital courtyard. Another image showed a mass grave full of bodies. More than 1,500 bodies were collected, and half of them had been buried by Tuesday evening, eastern Libya’s health minister said.
The destruction reached Derna and other parts of eastern Libya on Sunday evening. As Storm Daniel pounded the coast, residents of Derna said they heard loud explosions and realized that dams outside the city had collapsed.
![floods in libya](https://www.aljazeera.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/2023-09-12T182355Z_1847791917_RC2173APNR1K_RTRMADP_3_LIBYA-STORM-DERNA-1694544717.jpg?w=770&resize=770%2C563)
Flash floods were unleashed in the Wadi Derna, a river that flows from the mountains through the city to the sea.
Outside help was just beginning to reach Derna on Tuesday, more than 36 hours after the disaster struck. The floods damaged or destroyed many access roads to the coastal city with around 89,000 inhabitants.
The deputy mayor of Derna, Ahmed Madroud, told Al Jazeera that “at least 20 percent of the city has been destroyed.”
He said the reason behind the destruction was related to the city’s weak infrastructure and the fact that many buildings were clustered in narrow streets close to the river.
“When the river overflowed its banks, it took all the buildings and the families that lived in them with it,” he said.
‘State of sadness’
Videos posted online by residents showed large patches of mud and wreckage where raging waters had swept away neighborhoods on both banks of the river.
Multi-story apartment buildings once far from the river had their facades ripped away and concrete floors collapsed.
On Tuesday, local emergency workers, including troops, government workers, volunteers and residents, dug through the rubble looking for the dead. They also used inflatable boats to retrieve bodies from the water.
![Here](https://www.aljazeera.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/AP23255573953595-1694535128.jpg?w=770&resize=770%2C433)
Al Jazeera’s Emaduldin Bileid says hundreds of volunteers from western Libya are heading to the east of the country to provide support, while dozens of civil society organizations are raising aid to bring it to Derna by land and air.
After more than a decade of unrest, Libya remains divided between two rival governments: one in the west and the other in the east, each backed by different militias and foreign governments.
“The whole of Libya is experiencing a state of general sadness,” Bileid said. “As soon as the disaster happened, all political disagreements ended, and everyone agrees on the need to step up to overcome this ordeal.”
Gilles Carbonnier, vice-president of the International Committee of the Red Cross, told Al Jazeera that the situation in eastern Libya is “extremely dire”.
“Hundreds and hundreds of people may have died, thousands have been affected and people are missing,” he said.
‘Days in preparation’
According to Anas El Gomati, founder and director of the Sadeq Institute, a Tripoli-based public policy think tank, although the presence of two rival governments in Libya complicated the authorities’ efforts to respond to the crisis, the authorities had sufficient time to to coordinate an action. better response.
“We had days and hours to prepare for this,” El Gomati said, referring to the storm’s impact on Turkey and Greece days before reaching Libya.
“Unlike the situation in Morocco, where tectonic plates were moving and they had seconds to prepare, in Libya, when the dams started to swell and slowly fill up, they had days and hours to plan an evacuation . ”
The storm hit other areas in eastern Libya, including the town of Bayda, where around 50 people were reported killed. Bayda Medical Center, the main hospital, was flooded and patients had to be evacuated, according to images shared by the center on Facebook.
Other towns that suffered the impact included Susa, Marj and Shahatt, according to the government.