Over 2,300 dead in Libya floods ‘calamity’, thousands missing

A boy pulls a suitcase past debris in a flash-flood damaged area in Derna, eastern Libya, on September 11, 2023. Flash floods in eastern Libya killed more than 2,300 people in the Mediterranean coastal city of Derna alone, the emergency services of the Tripoli-based government said on 12 September - AFP 

BENGHAZI (AFP): At least 2,300 people were killed in Libya and thousands more were reported missing after catastrophic flash floods broke river dams and tore through an eastern coastal city, devastating entire neighbourhoods.

As global concern spread, multiple nations offered to urgently send aid and rescue teams to help the war-scarred country that has been overwhelmed by what one UN official labelled “a calamity of epic proportions”.

Massive destruction shattered the Mediterranean coastal city of Derna, home to about 100,000 people, where multi-storey buildings on the river banks collapsed and houses and cars vanished in the raging waters.

Emergency services reported an initial death toll of more than 2,300 in Derna alone and said over 5,000 people remained missing while about 7,000 were injured. The floods were caused by torrential rains from Storm Daniel, which made landfall in Libya on Sunday after earlier lashing Greece, Bulgaria and Turkey. Derna, 250km (150 miles) east of Benghazi, is ringed by hills and bisected by what is normally a dry riverbed in summer, which has turned into a raging torrent of mud-brown water that also swept away several major bridges.

The number of dead given by the Libyan emergency service roughly matched the grim estimates provided by the Red Cross and by authorities in the east, who have warned the death toll may yet rise further.

“The death toll is huge and might reach thousands,” said Tamer Ramadan of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, three of whose volunteers were also reported dead.

“We confirm from our independent sources of information that the number of missing people is hitting 10,000 persons so far,” Ramadan added.