A storm and floods in eastern Libya have left estimated fatalities ranging from hundreds to thousands of people, senior officials said on Monday.
The head of the Red Crescent aid group in the region said Derna’s toll was expected to reach 250. But the leader of Libya’s eastern government, Osama Hamad, said more than 2,000 people had died in the coastal city of Derna and thousands more were missing.
Mr Hamad did not give a source for his data and Reuters was not able to verify the figures in a country politically split east and west with two rival administrations and where public services have crumbled since a 2011 Nato-backed uprising.
Ahmed Mismari, the spokesperson for the Libyan National Army (LNA) which controls eastern Libya, said in a televised news conference that the disaster came after dams above Derna had collapsed, “sweeping whole neighbourhoods with their residents into the sea”.
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Mr Mismari put the number of missing at 5,000-6,000.
Storm Daniel swept in over the Mediterranean on Sunday, swamping roads and destroying buildings in Derna, and hitting other settlements along the coast including Libya’s second biggest city of Benghazi.
Footage on social media and broadcast by eastern Libya’s Almostkbal TV showed people stranded on the roofs of their vehicles calling for help and waters washing away cars.
“The missing are in the thousands, and the dead exceed 2,000,” Mr Hamad told al-Masar TV. “Entire neighbourhoods in Derna have disappeared, along with their residents ... swept away by water.”
Mr Hamad heads a government that is not internationally recognised, and which operates in eastern areas of Libya that are controlled by Khalifa Haftar’s LNA.
The missing include seven LNA members, Mr Mismari, said.
“We recorded at least 150 deaths [in Derna] after the collapse of buildings. We expect death toll to rise to 250. The situation is very catastrophic,” the Red Crescent’s Kais Fhakeri told Reuters.
Derna resident Saleh al-Obaidi said he had managed to flee with his family, though houses in a valley near the city had collapsed.
“People were asleep and woke up and found their homes surrounded by water,” he told Reuters.
Ahmed Mohamed, another resident, said: “We were asleep, and when we woke up, we found water besieging the house. We are inside and trying to get out.
Almostkbal TV posted pictures of a collapsed road between Sousse and Shahat, home to the Greek-founded and Unesco-listed archaeological site Cyrene.
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Witnesses said the water level had reached three metres in Derna.
Libya’s eastern-based parliament declared three days of mourning. Abdulhamid al-Dbeibah, prime minister of the interim government in Tripoli, also declared three days of mourning in all the affected cities, calling them “disaster areas”.
Four major oil ports in Libya, Ras Lanuf, Zueitina, Brega and Es Sidra, were closed from Saturday evening for three days, two oil engineers told Reuters.
Search-and-rescue operations were ongoing, witnesses said. Authorities declared a state of extreme emergency, closing schools and shops and imposing a curfew.
His administration holds little sway in eastern Libya, but Mr Dbeibah said on Sunday he had directed all state agencies to “immediately deal” with the damage and floods in eastern cities.
Mr Dbeibah’s government is recognised by the Central Bank of Libya, which disburses funds to government departments across the country.
The United Nations in Libya said it was following the storm closely and would “provide urgent relief assistance in support of response efforts at local and national levels”.
Qatar’s Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani instructed the government to send aid to the affected area in eastern Libya, Qatar’s state news agency reported. – Reuters