Libya Flood Death Toll Reaches 11,300

The Libyan Red Crescent on Thursday said the death toll from the flood in Derna, Libya, has reached 11,300 – and may continue to climb, as more than 10,000 people are still missing.

“There are thousands of bodies. They put over 250 people in a grave. There’s no time, and there are concerns about them decomposing,” Red Crescent paramedic Sarraj bin Taher said.

Both Libyan and international officials said the deaths were difficult to count because the city of Derna was so heavily damaged, the security situation in Libya remains perilous, the country has no national government, and many of the dead may have been washed out to sea.

The health minister of the eastern Libyan government, Othman Abduljaleel, told reporters that divers have been deployed to find bodies offshore. Other teams are searching for bodies in the rubble of Derna, having largely given up hope of finding survivors.

“The situation is very large and surprising for the city of Derna. We were not able to confront it with our capabilities that preceded the storm and the torrent,” Mayor Abdel Moneim al-Ghaithi said on Wednesday. The mayor believes the death toll could exceed 20,000 in the end, which would represent almost a fifth of Derna’s population.

NPR wistfully suggested the tragedy might bring both halves of Libya’s divided government together, pointing to $412 million announced for Derna reconstruction by the western government headquartered in Tripoli, even though Derna is controlled by the eastern government of Tobruk. One of the many militia groups based in Tripoli also sent “a convoy with humanitarian aid” to the flooded city.

“Both governments have reached out to the international community requesting services and help,” Tahuid Pasha, a representative of the U.N. International Organization for Migration (IOM), told BBC Radio 4 on Thursday evening.

“The Government of National Unity has extended its support to us and its request on behalf of the entire country, and they are also coordinating with the government in the east. The challenge now is the international community responding accordingly to the needs and the requests of the governments,” Pasha said. The Government of National Unity (GNU) is the Tripoli-based administration.

“This is a time for unity of purpose. All those affected must receive support without regard for any affiliations. It is important that particular care is taken to ensure protection of groups in vulnerable situations who are rendered even more at risk in the aftermath of such a disaster,” U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk said.

On the other hand, a great deal of finger-pointing and blame-shifting is underway, and the scramble to avoid accountability will likely become worse, as Tripoli-based Prime Minister Abdul-Hamid Dbeibah has called for an investigation. 

The day before Mediterranean Storm Daniel struck Libya, Mayor al-Ghaithi told a news conference that the area around Derna’s rickety dams should be evacuated, but the Interior Ministry of the Tobruk government ordered curfews instead.

The mayor’s office said the dams, which were built in the 1970s, had not been maintained in years, even though audit reports found millions of dollars allocated for maintenance. Tripoli-based PM Dbeibah cited the poor maintenance record in his call for an investigation.

The attorney general for the western government, Mohamed al-Menfi, threatened consequences for “everyone who made a mistake or neglected either in abstaining or taking actions that resulted in the collapse of the dams in the city of Derna.”

The speaker for the Parliament of the eastern government, Aguila Saleh, insisted that no one should blame Tobruk for the horrific death toll.

“Don’t say ‘if only we’d done this, if only we’d done that.’ What took place in our country was an incomparable natural disaster,” Saleh said.

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