On Friday, paramedics and volunteers continued to work searching for thousands of missing people in Derna after the massive floods that swept the city on the eastern coast of Libya.
Tamer Ramadan, responsible for aid operations for Libya at the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, said, “There is still hope that those alive will be found.”
He refused to give a death toll, stressing that it “will not be final or accurate.”
Pictures broadcast by a Libyan television channel on Thursday evening showed a rescue member talking to a victim trapped under the rubble of a collapsed building in Derna.
In Geneva, United Nations Assistant Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, Martin Griffiths, announced on Friday that the extent of the disaster in Libya is still unknown.
He said in a press conference, “I think the problem for us is coordinating our efforts with the government and with other authorities in the east of the country, and then determining the size” of the disaster, adding, “We have not achieved that yet. We do not know that.” Also, “the level of needs and the number of deaths are still unknown.”
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs launched an appeal to raise funds of more than $71 million to provide immediate assistance to about 250,000 people most affected by the floods resulting from Storm Daniel, warning of a “catastrophic” situation.
The office said that after the destruction of many roads, “the municipality of Derna urges the authorities to establish a sea corridor for urgent assistance and evacuation operations,” estimating the number of those directly affected by the disaster at about 884,000 people.
The flow of water on Sunday night led to the collapse of two dams in areas above Derna, causing the river that crosses the city to suddenly flood, according to what residents reported, explaining that the water flowed at a height of several meters. All the bridges linking eastern and western Derna also collapsed.
An Agence France-Presse photographer at the scene narrated that the center of the city of Derna had become like a flat land after the waters uprooted trees and swept away buildings and bridges.
The authorities fear that the human toll will be huge amid huge losses in the city, which numbered one hundred thousand people before the disaster.
The International Organization for Migration reported the displacement of more than 38,000 people in eastern Libya, including 30,000 from Derna, while the United Nations said that “at least ten thousand people” are still missing.
In light of the difficulty of access, communications, relief operations, and the chaos prevailing in Libya even before the disaster, there are conflicting figures on the number of victims.
The spokesman for the Ministry of Interior in the eastern government reported on Wednesday that more than 3,800 people died in the floods, while thousands are missing.
“They were swept away by the waters”
Residents say that hundreds of bodies are still buried under tons of accumulated mud and rubble.
Abdul Aziz Busmiya (29 years old), a resident of the Shiha neighborhood in Derna who survived the floods, told Agence France-Presse, “The water was carrying mud, trees, and iron debris, and crossed kilometers before sweeping through the city center and sweeping away or burying everything that was in its path.” .
He added with emotion, “I lost friends and relatives, some of whom were buried under the mud, and some of whom were swept into the sea.”
He believed that the Libyan authorities did not take the necessary measures to remedy the disaster, but rather merely issued instructions to residents to remain in their homes in anticipation of Storm Daniel, which struck Turkey, Bulgaria, and Greece before it arrived in Libya on Sunday.
The number of body bags distributed in the city reveals the scale of the tragedy. The International Committee of the Red Cross alone reported securing 6,000 of them.
“Without food and shelter”
The head of the International Committee of the Red Cross mission in Libya, Jan Fredes, said that the disaster “was very violent,” adding that “a wave seven meters high swept buildings and infrastructure into the sea,” noting that there were “bodies being thrown by the waves on the beach.”
On Wednesday, the United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator, Martin Griffiths, announced the allocation of ten million dollars from an emergency fund for flood victims, noting that the United Nations had deployed on the ground “a large team to support and finance the international response.”
The World Food Program announced that it had begun providing food assistance to more than five thousand families displaced by the floods, explaining that thousands of families in Derna are “without food or shelter.”
The United Nations, the United States, the European Union, and many countries in the Middle East and North Africa promised to send aid, and foreign ambulance teams began working to search for any potential survivors.
The Secretary-General of the International Meteorological Organization, Petteri Taalas, said Thursday that if there had been better coordination, “warnings could have been issued and emergency management agencies would have been able to evacuate the population, but we would have avoided most of the human losses.”
He told reporters in Geneva that years of conflict in Libya “largely destroyed the meteorological network and information systems.”
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2023-09-15 17:39:08
