As many as 2,000 people have been killed after a massive flood caused by heavy rain hit the city of Derna in Libya. Libya on Monday sought for international flood and declared three areas in its eastern Cyrenaica province a disaster area due to floods.
In the wake of the situation, Turkey is sending three aircraft to transport a rescue team, comprising 168 personnel, two search and rescue vehicles, two rescue boats, and humanitarian aid to Libya.
According to President Tayyip Erdogan, the aircraft carrying hundreds of tents, generators, food, hygiene products and clothes, will depart for Benghazi on Tuesday morning. He also informed that members of the gendarmerie and Turkey’s disaster management agency (AFAD) would be among the rescuers.
Meanwhile, several videos going viral on social media showed drowned cars, collapsed buildings, and torrents of water surging across streets. Storm Daniel swept away entire areas and ruined homes in a number of coastal towns, with the city of Derna “cut off completely” after two old dams burst.
People stand in a damaged road as a powerful storm and heavy rainfall flooded hit Shahhat city, Libya, September 11, 2023
“Osama Hamad (the president of Libya’s eastern parliament-backed administration) said in press statements that residential neighborhoods disappeared after the torrents swept them into the sea along with thousands of their residents, and the situation is catastrophic and unprecedented in Libya,” CNN reported citing the Libyan News Agency LANA.
According to a report by CNN, the hospitals in the eastern city of Bayda were evacuated after significant flooding caused by a big storm, as per the videos uploaded on Facebook by the Medical Centre of Bayda.
Ahmed Mismari, the spokesperson for the Libyan National Army (LNA) that controls eastern Libya, said in a televised news conference that the disaster came after dams above Derna had collapsed, “sweeping whole neighbourhoods with their residents into the sea”. Mismari put the number of missing at 5,000-6,000.
Libya is politically divided between East and West and public services have crumbled since a 2011 NATO-backed uprising that prompted years of conflict.
Storm Daniel swept in over the Mediterranean on Sunday, swamping roads and destroying buildings in Derna, and hitting other settlements along the coast, including Libya’s second-biggest city of Benghazi. Photographs of Derna, which Reuters could not immediately verify, showed a wide torrent running through the city centre where a far narrower waterway had previously flowed. Ruined buildings stood on either side.