The authorities in the country’s east said that two dams unleashed their waters on the city of Derna during a heavy storm this weekend, sweeping entire neighborhoods into the sea.
Thousands of people have been killed in Libya in the flooding caused by heavy rains that devastated parts of the country this weekend, a disaster exacerbated by the collapse of two dams in the coastal city of Derna, aid agencies said on Tuesday.
Tamer Ramadan, head of the Libya delegation for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, said the death toll from the flooding was expected to reach thousands in coming days. Speaking to reporters at a U.N. briefing via videoconference from Tunisia, he said 10,000 people were missing, and that those figures were based on reports from the Libyan Red Crescent on the ground.
A Libyan ambulance and emergency services department said least 2,300 people had died and more than 5,000 were missing after heavy rainfall over the weekend in the northeast of Libya swelled waters over riverbanks, sweeping away homes and cutting off roads.
The collapse of the dams, south of Derna, deepened the disaster after they unleashed water that swept through the city and carried “entire neighborhoods” into the sea, Ahmed al-Mismari, a spokesman for the Libyan National Army, the dominant political force in the area, said in a televised news conference on Monday.
Libya has been divided for years between an internationally recognized government based in Tripoli and a separately administered region in the east, including Derna. The ambulance and emergency services department that provided the numbers of dead and missing is affiliated with the government in the west, which said it had sent rescue teams to the east.
An official in the administration that controls the east told Reuters on Tuesday that more than 1,000 bodies had been recovered so far.
