Libya Update: 10,000 Missing in Deluge, Dam Collapse

Casualty count rising too fast for journalists to stay ahead of it.

The city of Derna has been most acutely affected, after raging torrents of water tore through two dams and swept entire buildings into the sea. Othman Abdul Jalil, health minister and spokesman of the U.N.-recognized government in west Libya, told local television channel al-Masar that the situation continues to deteriorate in the western city, and at least 2,000 have been found dead.

“I expect numbers of dead will rise to 10,000,” he told the channel early on Tuesday, adding that there is yet to be any confirmed final death count as many parts of the city remain inaccessible. Derna is estimated to have had around 90,000 residents.

Bloomberg:

Libya’s eastern city of Derna has buried 700 people killed in devastating flooding and 10,000 were reported missing as rescuers teams struggled to retrieve many more bodies from the horrific deluge, officials said Tuesday.

Authorities estimated earlier that as many as 2,000 people may have perished in Derna alone. Mediterranean storm Daniel on Sunday night caused havoc and flash flooding in many towns in eastern Libya but the worst destruction was in Derna, where heavy rainfall and floods broke dams and washed away entire neighborhoods, authorities said.

Tamer Ramadan, Libya envoy for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, said 10,000 people were missing after the unprecedented flooding. Speaking to reporters at a U.N. briefing in Geneva via videoconference from Tunisia, he said the death toll was “huge” and expected to reach into the thousands in the coming days.

Speaking about the fallout from Friday’s devastating earthquake in Morocco, on the other side of North Africa, Ramadan said the situation in Libya was “as devastating as the situation in Morocco.”

Ossama Hamad, prime minister of the government in eastern Libya, said that many of the missing were believed to have been carried away after two upstream dams burst. He said the devastation in Derna is far beyond the capabilities of his country.