Residents of the devastated Libyan city of Derna searched for their missing relatives, while rescue workers appealed for more body bags, after catastrophic floods that killed thousands of people and swept many into the sea.
Vast areas of the Mediterranean city were destroyed by a torrent of water caused by a strong storm that swept through a usually dry riverbed on Sunday evening, causing the dams above the city to collapse. Multi-storey buildings collapsed with families sleeping inside.
On Wednesday, Interior Ministry spokesman Lieutenant Tariq Al-Kharraz told Agence France-Presse that 3,840 deaths have been recorded in the Mediterranean city so far, including 3,190 who have already been buried. Among them were at least 400 foreigners, most of them from Sudan and Egypt.
Meanwhile, Hisham Abu Shekiwat, Minister of Civil Aviation in the administration that runs eastern Libya, told Reuters news agency that more than 5,300 dead had been counted so far, and said the number was likely to rise significantly and perhaps double.
Derna Mayor Abdel Moneim al-Ghaithi told the Saudi-owned Al Arabiya TV channel that the estimated number of deaths in the city could reach between 18,000 and 20,000, based on the number of areas destroyed by the floods.
Mahmoud Abdel Karim, a resident of Derna, told journalist Moataz Ali in Tripoli that he lost his mother and brother, after they failed to evacuate in time from their apartment on the first floor after a dam collapsed.
“She refused to leave her place… She did not imagine that the situation would be so terrible and she told him [Abdulkarim] “It was just normal rain,” Ali said during an event organized for the Darwani community in Tripoli.
According to Abdul Karim, when his mother and brother finally decided to leave their apartment, they were swept away by flood waters just as they reached the streets to escape.
Mabrouka Al-Mismari, a journalist who was able to leave Derna on Tuesday, describes the city as a “disaster on a massive scale.” “There is no water, no electricity, and no gasoline,” she told Al Jazeera. “The city was razed to the ground.”
She added that the residential buildings containing families were swept away by the water. “There is a wave of displacement as people are trying to flee Derna, but many are stuck because many roads are closed or have disappeared,” Al-Mismari said, adding that some families have taken refuge in schools.
Officials estimate the number of missing people at ten thousand. The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said the number was at least five thousand.
Clothes, toys, furniture, shoes and other possessions were scattered on the beach due to the torrent.
The streets were covered in deep mud and littered with uprooted trees and hundreds of smashed cars, many of them flipped on their sides or on their roofs. One of the cars was stuck on the balcony of the second floor of a destroyed building.
The devastation is visible from high points above Derna, where the densely populated city center, built along a seasonal riverbed, has become a wide, flat crescent of land with expanses of muddy water glistening in the sun. Buildings were swept away.
Rescue efforts
The mayor of Derna Al-Ghaithi said that rescue teams arrived from Egypt, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates, Turkey and Qatar.
He said: “We actually need specialized teams to recover bodies.” “I fear that the city will be infected with the epidemic due to the large number of bodies under the rubble and in the water.”
Al Jazeera’s Charles Stratford, reporting from Benghazi, said the field hospital was part of Qatar’s contribution to “what appears to be a growing international aid effort for Libya.”
“This is one of three Qatari military cargo planes expected to arrive in Benghazi today,” Stratford said.
Stratford said the aid also includes “medical equipment, medicine, food and tents.” “All aid will be transferred here to Derna as quickly as possible.”
Moreover, Al Jazeera’s Malik Trina, reporting from Tripoli, said there was an outpouring of support from Libyans themselves from across the country.
“We haven’t seen this kind of unity in many years here in the country,” Trina said.
He added that large government convoys carrying equipment from western Libya arrived in the east. Volunteer convoys loaded with aid are also heading east.
“We are now also seeing volunteers and people offering whatever they can – water, food, medicine, any supplies they can provide.”
Rescue operations are complicated by deep political divisions in the country of seven million people, which lacks a strong central government and has witnessed intermittent war since the NATO-backed uprising that ousted Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.
The internationally recognized Government of National Unity is based in Tripoli, in the west, while a parallel administration operates in the east, including Derna.
Criticism has emerged of local authorities in eastern Libya, including those in Derna, where some say local residents were not informed of the need to evacuate before the torrent of water flowed through the city.
But Al-Ghaithi insisted on Wednesday that residents be informed before the floods occur.
He said: “We took all precautions and informed… the residents of the areas of the possibility of a disaster occurring, and we established an emergency room… and the security forces carried out their duty.”
Additional reporting from Moataz Ali in Tripoli
“Internet practitioner. Social media maven. Certified zombieaholic. Lifelong communicator.”