The death toll from floods after two dams burst in eastern Libya has increased to 11,300, as announced this Friday by the Red Crescent (IFRC) in the country. A few hours ago, one of the access roads to the port city of Derna, which were completely destroyed by the torrent of water, was restored, which has speeded up the entry of rescue teams and doctors, but also television cameras. , which have shown the scope of the disaster.
About a quarter of Derna, with some 150,000 inhabitants, has been completely erased by the passage of water and now only a mountain of mud, pieces of buildings and vehicles remain. Rescue teams have told the Turkish news agency Anadolu that in some parts of the city the mountain of rubble is close to four meters high. Images from the agency show rescue workers in waist-deep water, surrounded by floating pieces of iron and wood, looking for signs of life around them. The infrastructure to assist rescue teams during the search has been completely destroyed. Electricity has barely been restored in some parts of the city and there is no drinking water.
Bashir Ben Amir, representative of the International Rescue Committee, told the BBC that the lack of infrastructure slows down and makes work difficult: “Our teams work day and night, but the needs are high and increasing day after day. We need to ensure a basic logistics to be able to operate.
U.N. aid chief Martin Griffiths told a briefing in Geneva that more equipment is needed to recover bodies trapped under mud and in damaged buildings, as well as primary care to prevent outbreaks of cholera and other diseases. among the survivors. “The priority areas are shelter, food and key primary healthcare, due to concerns about cholera and lack of clean water,” he explained.
The Libyan disease control center has recorded 55 cases of children poisoned by drinking contaminated water from Derna. For their part, the World Health Organization (WHO) and other humanitarian aid groups have asked Libyan authorities to stop burying flood victims in mass graves, because they could pose a serious health risk if buried. They are located near remains of water.
“We urge the authorities of the communities affected by the tragedy not to rush into mass burials,” said Kazunobu Kojima, head of biosafety at the WHO.
The Libyan authorities have decided to carry out mass burials because they cannot safely house thousands of bodies in temporary morgues nor can they bury them regularly due to the difficulty of using transportation in the city after the floods. Furthermore, according to the Muslim rite, bodies should be buried at least twenty-four hours after death or, in any case, as soon as possible. More than 3,000 people were buried last Thursday and authorities announced that the burial of another 2,000 people was being arranged. Most have been buried in mass graves outside the city of Derna or in nearby towns.
For his part, Libya’s ambassador to the United Nations, Taher El-Sonni, significantly reduced the death toll to around 6,000 people, while around 10,000 remain missing. Rescue teams have increasingly less hope of finding people alive under the rubble. The death toll is expected to continue rising, although the figures published by Libyan authorities are sometimes disparate, due to the country being divided into two rival entities since 2014.
Numerous local testimonies have told the media that lifeless bodies do not stop appearing in the streets, under the mud and on the seashore. The current of water has carried bodies up to 150 kilometers from Derna. The devastating floods have left more than 38,000 people homeless. Although experts indicate that the rupture of the dams could have been avoided with the maintenance of the infrastructure, Storm Daniel, which hit the eastern Mediterranean last week, has caused unprecedented rainfall in Libya. Last Sunday, more than 400 liters per square meter fell in a 24-hour period in the east of the country, when the month of September has a historical average of 1.5 liters in this region.
