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| A coastal road in Derna collapsed after heavy flooding. Photograph: AP Via the Guadian |
At least 30,000 people have been left homeless by catastrophic flooding in Libya, as satellite images from the disaster zone showed immense devastation to a coastal city. The United Nations' migration agency confirmed that a large number of Libyans were displaced in the port city of Derna in the east, where thousands of bodies were washed up on the shores after they were swept away in the initial deluge. The death toll has already surpassed 5,000 people, but officials in eastern Libya say that the number is likely to increase significantly and may even double because the number of missing people is also thousands.
Ahmed Abdalla, a Derna resident who survived the storm, said that bodies were being piled in the yard of a local hospital, the only site of an intact graveyard, for burial in mass graves. The situation is indescribable, with entire families dead in this disaster and some washed away to the sea. Another survivor, Mutstafa Salem, also a survivor in Derna, lost his entire family, who lived in communities close to a severely flooded river bank.
Conflict-stricken Libya was already in a dire state before the flooding hit, and initial reports suggest that infrastructure in the east was neglected and could not cope with the scale of the flooding. The country is divided between an internationally recognized government in Tripoli in the west and a self-proclaimed rival government in the east, making rescue attempts potentially complicated. The European Union confirmed its commitment to send aid to Libya following similar pledges by Qatar, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates. Italy has also said it will send rescue planes with firefighters and other emergency rescue personnel and a navy ship.
