Libya flooding: before and after satellite images reveal scale of disaster

International aid is slowly starting to reach the devastated port city of Derna as questions are raised over how as many as 20,000 people may have perished when Storm Daniel hit the northern coast of Libya on Saturday night.

Some 10,000 people had been declared missing by official aid agencies such as the Libyan Red Crescent, but the new, ominous higher estimate of 20,000 deaths came from the director of al-Bayda medical centre, Abdul Rahim Maziq.

Corpses still litter the street, and drinkable water is in short supply. Whole families have been wiped out by the storm and with the remoteness of some villages and the rudimentary nature of municipal government, it will take time for the death toll to be confirmed.

But the scale of devastation appeared even worse than officials had initially predicted. The “sea is constantly dumping dozens of bodies”, said Hichem Abu Chkiouat, the minister of civil aviation in the administration that runs eastern Libya, adding that reconstruction would cost billions of dollars.

The International Organization for Migration (IOM) in Libya said on Wednesday that at least 30,000 individuals were displaced in Derna, the town most affected by storm Daniel. IOM added that 6,085 were known to have been displaced in other storm-hit areas including Benghazi, with the number of deaths still unverified. – Guardian