Every hour that passes, the magnitude of the tragedy in Libya is greater. Four days after the catastrophic floods that devastated the east of the country, Libya already has 6,800 dead. These are provisional figures provided yesterday in Tripoli by the head of the Presidential Council, Muhammad al-Manfi, in a televised speech in which he confessed that the disaster "exceeds the capacities" of the Maghreb country.
The number of victims is expected to rise sharply, as there are still 10,000 people missing, according to data provided by the Cross. If that were the case, the death toll could rise to 20,000. Meanwhile, rescue operations continue, despite fears that many bodies are lost in Mediterranean waters.
The first mortal remains are already appearing on the shores of Libya. "The sea keeps throwing up corpses," Hixem Abu Xkiouat, the Minister of Civil Aviation of the administration that runs eastern Libya, lamented to Reuters.
The place most affected by the floods is the city of Derna, with 120,000 inhabitants. The 33 million liters of water that Cyclone Daniel dumped on Sunday broke two nearby dams, causing the Wadi Derna to overflow. The flood washed away everything in its path: buildings, cars, bridges, roads and most importantly: thousands of human lives.
"The situation is indescribable. There are whole families killed in this disaster," Ahmed Abdalla, a survivor who joined a rescue team, told AP by phone. "The human cost is enormous. It's a disaster in every sense of the word", a survivor who lost 11 members of his family lamented on local television while a group of rescuers tried to calm him down.
A Derna hospital director counted two days ago, in his center alone, 1,700 corpses, and assured that 500 more had been buried in another part of the city. The next day, lifeless bodies lay on the hospital floor as some people tried to identify missing family members as more dead arrived. One of these, Mustafa Salem, told Reuters that until then he had lost 30 members of his family. Now, all these dead are buried in mass graves in the only intact cemetery in the city.
The staggering devastation reflects the intensity of the storm, but also the vulnerability of Libya. Years of war and the lack of a central government – the country is divided into rival governments, one in the east and one in the west – have left Libya with an infrastructure vulnerable to intense rains. In fact, the Maghreb country is the only one that has not yet developed a climate strategy, according to the United Nations.
The internationally recognized Government of National Unity (GUN) is based in Tripoli, in the west. Derna is located in an eastern area where a parallel administration operates and where control is exercised by the Libyan national army.
This political rift complicates rescue operations, already very difficult in themselves due to the effects of floods that have destroyed many access roads to Derna, located 250 kilometers east of Benghazi. The blockade hinders the arrival of rescue teams and international humanitarian assistance.
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs says emergency response teams have been mobilized to help on the ground. In addition, governments such as Egypt, Qatar, Iran, Turkey, Algeria and several Europeans have already sent urgent aid to Libya.
