NEAR DERNA, Libya – Bodies were washing ashore in eastern Libya on Wednesday, swelling the death toll from a storm that swept whole neighborhoods out to sea, with thousands already confirmed dead and many thousands more still missing.
Swathes of the Mediterranean city of Derna were obliterated by the flood torrent, unleashed after rains from a powerful storm burst dams above the city on Sunday night. Whole multi-story buildings were swept away with sleeping families inside.
The “sea is constantly dumping dozens of bodies,” Hichem Abu Chkiouat, minister of civil aviation in the administration that runs eastern Libya, told Reuters by phone.
“We have counted more than 5,300 dead so far, and the number is likely to increase significantly and may even double because the number of missing people is also thousands,” he added.
Tens of thousands of people had been made homeless, he said, appealing for international aid and adding that Libya did not have the experience to deal with the aftermath of such a disaster.
Officials say at least 10,000 people are feared missing or dead, though tolls of dead confirmed so far vary. Tariq Kharaz, a spokesperson for the eastern authorities, said 3,200 bodies had been recovered, and 1,100 of them had yet to be identified.
At a hospital in Derna on Tuesday, scores of bodies wrapped in blankets were laid out on the floor in corridors or outside on the pavement, for residents to try to identify them.
Mustafa Salem said no one had been found alive from his entire extended family which lived in homes close together near the river valley, opposite a mosque.
“People were asleep and no one was ready,” he told Reuters. “We lost 30 people so far, 30 members of the same family. We haven’t found anyone.”
The U.N. migration agency, the International Organization for Migration, said at least 30,000 people had been displaced in Derna.
“The most important thing for the search teams is that we need bags for the bodies,” Lutfi al-Misrati, the director of the search team, told Al Jazeera in a phone interview.
AID CONVOYS
The devastation was clear from high points above Derna, where the densely populated city center, built along a seasonal riverbed, was now a wide, flat crescent of earth with stretches of muddy water gleaming in the sun, all its building swept away.
While Reuters was on the road trying to return to the city on Wednesday, aid convoys and trucks carrying bulldozers could be seen heading in.
Satellite photographs of the city from before and after the disaster showed that what had been a narrow waterway through the city center was now a wide scar, with all the buildings that had run along it gone. Buildings had also been swept away in other parts of the city.
Rescue operations are complicated by deep political fractures in the country of 7 million people that has lacked a strong central government and been at war on-and-off since a NATO-backed uprising that toppled Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.
An internationally recognized Government of National Unity (GNU) is based in Tripoli, in the west, while a parallel administration operates in the east, including Derna.
Libya’s Tripoli-based Prime Minister Abdulhamid al-Dbeibah called the floods an unprecedented catastrophe. Libya’s Presidential Council head Mohammed al-Menfi has called for national unity.
Governments including Egypt, Qatar and Turkey have rushed aid to Libya. The Italian defense ministry said it was sending two military planes, carrying firefighters and other emergency rescue personnel, and a navy ship.
The United Arab Emirates has sent two aid planes carrying 150 tons of urgent food, relief and medical supplies to eastern Libya, the UAE’s state news agency WAM reported.
PINOYS IN LIBYA
In Manila, the Department of Foreign Affairs and the Department of Migrant Workers (DMW) said they have not received any report of any Filipino casualty from the massive flooding.
“Tripoli PE (Philippine Embassy) has reached out to the Filipino community leaders there and continues to monitor developments in regard to the disaster,” the DFA said in a statement.
DMW officer-in-charge Undersecretary Hans Leo Cacdac said, “We have not received any reports of OFWs affected by the flooding. We hope that no Filipinos are affected by the flooding.”
“Most of the Filipinos are on the western side, which is the Tripoli side,” he added.
Around 1,100 Filipinos are living and working in eastern Libya according to the DFA, including 90 who are in the areas badly hit by the storm.
Thirty more Filipinos are in the district of Dema, 50 in the district of Jabel al Akhdar, and 10 in the city of Tobruk.
The DFA said the majority of the Filipinos in those areas are working medical professionals — nurses and clinical instructors.
“They were already relocated to higher grounds by the hospital management at the height of the typhoon,” the DFA said.
Last month, the DFA lowered its alert level for Libya from 4 (mandatory repatriation) to 3 (voluntary repatriation) due to the significant improvement in security conditions in the civil war-plagued North African country.
The DFA instituted the mandatory repatriation of Filipinos in 2019 following fresh clashes between rival militias vying for power.
Libya had been without a central government since 2011 when long-time leader Muammar Khadaffi was ousted in a popular revolt. — Reuters, Ashzel Hachero and Gerard Naval
