No fewer than 10,000 people were feared missing in Libya on Tuesday as floods caused by a devastating storm which burst dams and wiped out one-quarter of the eastern city of Derna.
The report from Reuters said that more than 1,000 bodies had already been recovered in Derna alone.
Officials were expecting the death toll to be much higher after Storm Daniel spread across the Mediterranean into a country crumbling from more than a decade of conflict.
Derna, a coastal city of around 125,000 inhabitants, experienced vehicles overturned on the edges of roads, trees knocked down and abandoned flooded houses.
Entire neighbourhoods were swept away in the North African country, which was already reeling from years of conflict. Images showed the region obliterated by raging floodwaters, with cars, masonry and debris strewn across streets and entire buildings swept away.
The disaster wrought by intense rainfall from Mediterranean storm Daniel intensified when two dams burst — with more than 2,000 people killed in one coastal city and thousands more missing, aid agencies and officials said Tuesday.
Reacting to the havoc, Hichem Abu Chkiouat, Minister of Civil Aviation and member of the emergency committee in the administration that controls the east, said corpses have littered the area.
“I returned from Derna. It is very disastrous. Bodies are lying everywhere – in the sea, in the valleys, under the buildings,” Abu Chkiouat said.
“The number of bodies recovered in Derna is more than 1,000,” he said. “I am not exaggerating when I say that 25% of the city has disappeared. Many, many buildings have collapsed.”
The minister also said 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.
Tamer Ramadan, head of a delegation of the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), told reporters in Geneva via video link from Tunisia, “We can confirm from our independent sources of information that the number of missing people is hitting 10,000 so far.”
The disaster in Libya is “as devastating as the situation in Morocco,” Ramadan said, referring to the earthquake that hit Friday and killed more than 2,800 people.
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“The humanitarian needs are huge,” he added.
Dax Bennet Roque, Libya director for the Norwegian Refugee Council, said his team was reporting a “disastrous situation” after the floods hit some of the poorest communities along the coast.
“Many families have lost all their belongings, and search and rescue workers are looking for people missing. Tens of thousands of people are displaced with no prospect of going back home,” he said.
“Communities across Libya have endured years of conflict, poverty and displacement. The latest disaster will exacerbate the situation for these people,” he added.
On Monday, the Libyan Presidential Council declared the worst-affected areas, around the cities of Derna, Shahat and Dar Al Bayda, a disaster zone.
The council asked “brotherly and friendly countries and international organizations to provide assistance and support for the stricken areas and maritime rescue efforts to recover the victims.”
The U.S. ambassador to Libya, Richard B. Norland, said in a statement that Washington had “issued an official declaration of humanitarian need” in response to the floods.
“We are coordinating with UN partners and Libyan authorities to assess how best to target official U.S. assistance,” he said. Libyan Americans had been in contact with the embassy with offers of financial help, he said.
The Libyan Health Ministry said on Monday that it had chartered an African Airline plane and filled it with equipment and medicines to be sent to affected communities in the east of the country.
