In pics | Libya: Over 2,000 dead as floods wipe out quarter of Derna city

More than 2,000 people have been killed and nearly 10,000 people are still missing in the flood-hit eastern Libyan city of Derna, said local hospital director and the Red Cross on Tuesday (September 12), as per Reuters.

A minister from the administration that controls east Libya said that a quarter of the city was wiped out by the floods after dams burst due to the storm which brought torrential rains in the region.

The head of the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) in Libya said that around 10,000 people are thought to be missing after the major floods, and the death toll is “huge” and might reach thousands. 

Other eastern cities including Libya's second biggest city Benghazi, were also hit by the storm. 

The floods came after Storm Daniel swept through the Mediterranean over the weekend, bringing strong winds and heavy floods to several countries, including Libya, over the past two days. 

Hichem Abu Chkiouat, minister of civil aviation and member of the emergency committee in the administration that controls the east, had earlier told the news agency,

“I am not exaggerating when I say that 25% of the city has disappeared. Many, many buildings have collapsed.”

The statement was made after the official said that he had returned from the Derna, a coastal city of around 125,000 inhabitants and described the situation as “very disastrous”. 

According to the Tripoli-based government emergency services official, Osama Ali, more than 2,300 people have been killed in Derna alone. 

Ali's team which has reportedly been working in Derna since Monday (Sep 11) also said that more than 5,000 people remained missing while about 7,000 people were injured by the force of floodwaters that rushed down a normally dry river valley, reported AFP.

A report by Reuters citing Mohamad al-Qabisi, director of the Wahda Hospital said 1,700 people had died in one of the city's two districts and 500 had died in the other.

 Abu Chkiouat describing the situation in Derna also told Reuters, "Bodies are lying everywhere - in the sea, in the valleys, under the buildings." 

He also later told Al Jazeera that he expected the total number of dead across the country to reach more than 2,500. According to estimates, per the media report, some 20,000 people have been displaced. 

Addressing a press conference in Geneva via video link from Tunisia, Tamer Ramadan, the head of a delegation of the IFRC said, “We can confirm from our independent sources of information that the number of missing people is hitting 10,000 so far.” 

Meanwhile, Libya’s Red Crescent spokesman Taqfiq Shukri, said as many as  2,084 people are confirmed dead. 

An interior ministry spokesperson told Al Jazeera that naval teams were searching for the "many families that were swept into the sea in the city of Derna".

Speaking to Reuters in Derna, Mostafa Salem, 39, said he had lost 30 of his relatives. "Most people were sleeping. Nobody was ready." 

Another survivor Raja Sassi, 39 said that he with his wife and small daughter made it through the flood after the water had reached an upper floor, but the rest of his family couldn't. 

"At first we just thought it was heavy rain but at midnight we heard a huge explosion and it was the dam bursting," Sassi said. 

The Libyan city is bisected by a seasonal river that flows from the highlands to the south and is typically protected from flooding by dams.

A report by Reuters citing images confirmed that the dam had collapsed the remnants of which were seen some 11.5 km upstream of Derna where two river valleys converged. 

A Reuters journalist on their way to Derna saw vehicles overturned on the edges of roads, trees knocked down and abandoned flooded houses. But what was the city warned that something like this might happen? 

The media report citing a research paper published last year said that hydrologist Abdelwanees A. R. Ashoor of Libya's Omar Al-Mukhtar University had warned that repeated flooding of the seasonal riverbed, or wadi is a threat to Derna. 

The findings of the report were based on five floods since 1942 and called for immediate steps to ensure regular maintenance of the dams. 

"If a huge flood happens the result will be catastrophic for the people of the wadi and the city," the paper stated. 

Libya has been politically split east and west with two rival administrations in charge since 2011. The internationally recognised western government in Tripoli does not control eastern areas and has dispatched aid to Derna. 

Other countries, including the United States and Turkey, rushed to Libya's aid and sent search and rescue vehicles, rescue boats, generators and food as distraught Derna citizens rushed home in search of loved ones.

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said emergency response teams had been mobilised to help on the ground.

The head of the eastern Libyan government, Osama Hamad, is not internationally recognised and operates in the eastern regions of the country that are controlled by Khalifa Haftar’s Libyan National Army (LNA). Libya’s eastern-based parliament declared three days of mourning after the disaster. 

Prime Minister of the interim western government in Tripoli, Abdulhamid al-Dbeibah, on Monday (Sep 11) announced three days of mourning in affected cities, calling them “disaster cities” and emphasised “the unity of all Libyans” in the face of the disaster. 

Handout image provided by the office of Libya's Tripoli-based PM on September 12, 2023, shows mourners congregating for prayers at the Martyrs' Square in the capital Tripoli in remembrance of the victims who died in floods.