Libya’s Disaster: More than 5,000 Dead after ‘Daniel’ Batters Country’s East

By Staff, Agencies

More than 5,000 people have been killed and thousands more are feared dead after Storm Daniel triggered devastating floods in eastern Libya that broke dams and swept away entire neighborhoods.

Tarek al-Kharraz, a spokesman for the interior ministry of the government that oversees eastern Libya, one of two rival administrations running the country, said at least 5,200 people had died in Derna after two dams collapsed in the city.

Rows of bodies shrouded in blankets lay on the sidewalk outside a hospital in Derna, highlighting how the storm overwhelmed Libya's infrastructure which has been devastated by years of war and political turmoil.

Earlier on Tuesday, a Red Cross official said 10,000 people were missing, more than 48 hours after the storm made landfall.

“Our teams on the ground are still doing their assessment, [but] from what we see and from the news coming to us, the death toll is huge,” Tamer Ramadan, of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, told reporters in Tunisia.

He further added: “We don't have a definite number right now,” noting that “the number of missing people is hitting 10,000 people so far”.

The area of Libya affected by Storm Daniel is controlled by renegade general Khalifa Haftar.

Hichem Chkiouat, a minister and member of the eastern government's emergency committee, said Derna was one of the worst hit cities and had suffered unprecedented devastation.

“I am not exaggerating when I say that 25 percent of the city has disappeared. Many, many buildings have collapsed,” he told reporters, before declaring Derna a disaster zone.

Storm Daniel also hit Turkey, Bulgaria and Greece but Libya has been the most severely impacted in what one UN official has described as “a calamity of epic proportions”.