Libya’s eastern city of Derna was counting its dead yesterday, with 2,300 people confirmed killed in devastating flash floods unleashed by Storm Daniel and the Red Cross said that 10,000 are missing.
Two river dams burst after the storm hit on Sunday afternoon, releasing an enormous surge of water that tore through the Mediterranean coastal city, sweeping away buildings and the people inside them.
By late Tuesday, the confirmed death toll from emergency services in the politically fractured north African country was at least 2,300, although some officials were quoted as giving figures more than twice as high.
Photo: Reuters
Another 10,000 people were still missing, said Tamer Ramadan, head of delegation of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.
“The death toll is huge and might reach thousands,” Ramadan said.
“We don’t have a definite number right now,” he said on Tuesday, adding though that the organization had independent sources saying “the number of missing people is hitting 10,000 persons so far.”
Media reports quoted a spokesman for the interior ministry of Libya’s eastern-based government as saying “more than 5,200” people had died in Derna.
The city, a 300km drive east of Benghazi, is ringed by hills and bisected by what is normally a dry riverbed in summer, but which became a raging torrent of mud-brown water that also swept away several major bridges.
Derna was home to about 100,000 people, and many of its multistory buildings on the banks of the riverbed collapsed, with people, their homes and cars vanishing in the raging waters.
With global concern about the disaster spreading, several nations offered urgent aid-and-rescue teams to help the war-scarred country that has been overwhelmed by what one UN official called “a calamity of epic proportions.”
Elsewhere in eastern Libya, aid group the Norwegian Refugee Council said on Tuesday that “entire villages have been overwhelmed by the floods and the death toll continues to rise.”
“Communities across Libya have endured years of conflict, poverty and displacement,” the council said. “The latest disaster will exacerbate the situation for these people. Hospitals and shelters will be overstretched.”
Oil-rich Libya is still recovering from years of war and chaos that followed the 2011 NATO-backed popular uprising which toppled and killed longtime dictator Muammar Qaddafi.
The country is divided between two rival governments — the UN-brokered, internationally recognized administration based in Tripoli and a separate administration in the disaster-hit east.
Rescue teams from Turkey have arrived in eastern Libya, the authorities said.
The UN and several countries including Algeria, Egypt, France, Italy, Qatar and Tunisia offered to send aid.
France is sending a field hospital and about 50 military and civilian personnel able to treat 500 people a day, Paris said on Tuesday.
‘UNUSUAL EVENT’: The Australian defense minister said that the Chinese navy task group was entitled to be where it was, but Australia would be watching it closely The Australian and New Zealand militaries were monitoring three Chinese warships moving unusually far south along Australia’s east coast on an unknown mission, officials said yesterday. The Australian government a week ago said that the warships had traveled through Southeast Asia and the Coral Sea, and were approaching northeast Australia. Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles yesterday said that the Chinese ships — the Hengyang naval frigate, the Zunyi cruiser and the Weishanhu replenishment vessel — were “off the east coast of Australia.” Defense officials did not respond to a request for comment on a Financial Times report that the task group from
DEFENSE UPHEAVAL: Trump was also to remove the first woman to lead a military service, as well as the judge advocates general for the army, navy and air force US President Donald Trump on Friday fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General C.Q. Brown, and pushed out five other admirals and generals in an unprecedented shake-up of US military leadership. Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social that he would nominate former lieutenant general Dan “Razin” Caine to succeed Brown, breaking with tradition by pulling someone out of retirement for the first time to become the top military officer. The president would also replace the head of the US Navy, a position held by Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to lead a military service,
Four decades after they were forced apart, US-raised Adamary Garcia and her birth mother on Saturday fell into each other’s arms at the airport in Santiago, Chile. Without speaking, they embraced tearfully: A rare reunification for one the thousands of Chileans taken from their mothers as babies and given up for adoption abroad. “The worst is over,” Edita Bizama, 64, said as she beheld her daughter for the first time since her birth 41 years ago. Garcia had flown to Santiago with four other women born in Chile and adopted in the US. Reports have estimated there were 20,000 such cases from 1950 to
CONFIDENT ON DEAL: ‘Ukraine wants a seat at the table, but wouldn’t the people of Ukraine have a say? It’s been a long time since an election, the US president said US President Donald Trump on Tuesday criticized Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and added that he was more confident of a deal to end the war after US-Russia talks. Trump increased pressure on Zelenskiy to hold elections and chided him for complaining about being frozen out of talks in Saudi Arabia. The US president also suggested that he could meet Russian President Vladimir Putin before the end of the month as Washington overhauls its stance toward Russia. “I’m very disappointed, I hear that they’re upset about not having a seat,” Trump told reporters at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida when asked about the Ukrainian
RSS