As many as 150 people lost their lives as a result of severe floods that lashed eastern Libya, as storm Daniel swept across the Mediterranean battering Turkey, Bulgaria, and Greece, officials announced on Monday.
Residents in the affected area in Libya captured images of large mudslides, destroyed buildings, and entire neighbourhoods covered in murky water.
Speaking to Libyan media, Oussama Hamad, the prime minister of the east-based government, claimed “more than 2,000 are feared dead and thousands missing” in the city of Derna alone, however, neither medical sources nor emergency services have corroborated such claims.
While media outlets in eastern Libya have largely picked up on Hamad’s remarks, separate tolls reported from various areas add up to far lower figures.
Mohamed Massoud, a spokesman for Hamad’s Benghazi-based administration, said earlier that “at least 150 people were killed as a result of flooding and torrential rains left by storm Daniel in Derna, Jabal al-Akhdar region and the suburbs of Al-Marj”.
“This is besides the massive material damage that struck public and private properties,” he said, according to AFP.
Hundreds of residents are still believed to be trapped in difficult-to-reach areas as rescuers, backed by the military, attempt to rescue them.
Meanwhile, east Libyan authorities have lost contact with nine soldiers during rescue operations, according to Massoud, who also said that Hamad, a rescue committee head, and other ministers have travelled to Derna to assess the extent of the damage.
Experts have described storm Daniel — which killed at least 27 people when it struck parts of Greece, Turkey and Bulgaria in recent days — as “extreme in terms of the amount of water falling in a space of 24 hours”.
Derna was designated a “disaster area” on Monday by Hamad’s government, which in war-torn Libya battles with the UN-mediated, internationally acknowledged transitional government in Tripoli.
Abdelhamid Dbeibah, the head of Libya’s western government, declared three days of national mourning and stressed “the unity of all Libyans” in the face of the tragedy during an unprecedented ministerial meeting that was live-broadcast on Libyan television.
The National Petroleum Company, whose primary oilfields and terminals are located in eastern Libya, proclaimed “a state of maximum alert” and halted flights between production sites where activity was significantly restricted.
Derna, a city of 100,000 people, is in a catastrophic state due to the collapse of four main bridges, two buildings, and two dams, according to a city council official. He urged that the situation requires national and international intervention, located 900 kilometres east of Tripoli.
In a statement on Facebook, Presidential Council chief Mohamed al-Manfi called for “help from brotherly and friendly countries and international organisations”.
Manfi officially declared Derna, Shahat and Al-Bayda a “disaster zone”.
The storm struck eastern Libya on Sunday afternoon, hitting the coastal town of Jabal al-Akhdar especially hard, as well as Benghazi, where a curfew was declared and schools closed for several days.
The UN mission in Libya on Monday said on X, formerly Twitter, that it was “closely following the emergency caused by severe weather conditions in the eastern region of the country”.
It expressed its condolences over the deaths and said it was “ready to support efforts by local authorities and municipalities to respond to this emergency and provide urgent humanitarian assistance”.
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