Waleed al-Taleb / Facebook This villa in Derna, Libya, has remained intact despite the devastating flood
NOS Nieuws•vandaag, 16:21
Arab media call it a ‘miracle house’: in the Libyan city of Derna, a white villa stands proudly amid a thick layer of mud in a completely destroyed environment.
“This photo makes me happy and sad at the same time,” writes a Libyan woman on Facebook. Others wonder how the house was able to remain standing while everything around it was destroyed by a mudslide.
“Isn’t this photoshopped?” asks a Libyan. “Where’s the mud on the wall?” There are other buildings still standing in the area, but they are often damaged and covered in mud. This white villa is clean and untouched.
Satellite images
Local journalist Waleed Al-Taleb flew a drone over Derna on Saturday “to share the images with the world”, he told Al Jazeera. He posted dozens of aerial photos of the devastation in the city on his Facebook page. One of those images shows the large house that withstood the flood effortlessly.
The ‘wonder house’ can also be seen on satellite images published by the Reuters news agency after the disaster. The villa was built in 2016, less than 400 meters from the Mediterranean Sea. A local imam would be the owner.
ReutersThe ‘lonely’ white villa can also be seen on satellite images
Al-Taleb emphasizes that his photo of the intact building is “one hundred percent real” and not photoshopped. “These are my words and you can hold me to them,” the journalist explains on Facebook.
Tens of thousands of displaced people
Derna in northeastern Libya was severely affected by flooding on September 10, due to two dam breaches following heavy rainfall caused by Storm Daniel. A meter-high tidal wave destroyed a large part of the city. The official death toll stands at 3,958, with thousands of people still missing.
Libyan government investigators in the capital Tripoli estimate that around 1,500 buildings in Derna were damaged or disappeared in the disaster. According to figures from the International Organization for Migration (IOM), at least 43,059 people have been displaced in the area.
Correspondent Daisy Mohr joined a team in Derna that searches for bodies in the sea and on the beach:
Search for bodies in Libya: ‘Countless victims’
2023-09-21 14:21:14
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