At least 10,000 people were feared missing in Libya on Tuesday in floods caused by a huge storm that burst dams, swept away buildings and wiped out as much as a quarter of the eastern city of Derna.
More than 1,000 bodies have already been recovered in Derna alone and officials expected the death toll would be much higher, after Storm Daniel barrelled across the Mediterranean into a country divided and crumbling after over a decade of conflict.
A Reuters journalist on the way to Derna, a coastal city of around 125,000 inhabitants, saw vehicles overturned on the edges of roads, trees knocked down, and abandoned, flooded houses.
Videos showed a wide torrent running through the city centre after dams burst, wrecking buildings that stood on either side.
“Bodies are lying everywhere – in the sea, in the valleys, under the buildings,” Hichem Abu Chkiouat, minister of civil aviation in the administration that controls the east, told Reuters by phone shortly after visiting Derna.
“The number of bodies recovered in Derna is more 1,000,” he said. “I am not exaggerating when I say that 25% of the city has disappeared. Many, many buildings have collapsed.”
Abu Chkiouat later told Al Jazeera that he expected the total number of dead across the country to reach more than 2,500, as the number of missing people was rising.
Other eastern cities including Libya’s second biggest city Benghazi, were also hit by the storm, and Tamer Ramadan, head of a delegation of the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, said the death toll would be “huge”.
“We can confirm from our independent sources of information that the number of missing people is hitting 10,000 so far,” he told reporters via video link.
United Nations aid chief Martin Griffiths said in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, that emergency teams were now being mobilised to help on the ground.
As Turkey and other countries rushed aid to Libya, including search and rescue vehicles, rescue boats, generators and food, distraught Derna citizens rushed home in search of loved ones.