Death toll in Libyan flooding disaster ‘could be as high as 20,000’

As aid efforts get under way in the wake of the floods that devastated the eastern Libyan city of Derna, humanitarian workers are facing difficult choices about how to bury bodies fast enough to avoid disease spreading, while trying to identify the thousands who died.

The mayor of Derna said he believed as many as 20,000 people died in the catastrophic flooding caused by Storm Daniel. The Libyan Red Crescent has put the number of deaths at about 11,000, but said that was likely to rise.

Derna suffered large-scale destruction in the storm that hit Libya on Sunday, after two dams failed in a city bisected by the seasonal Wade Derna river. The dams are believed to have been holding back water weighing about 1.5 million tonnes.

[ Libya’s division exposed in city laid waste by floods ]

Whole families were killed; traditionally, extended families in Libya often live on the same plots or in the same buildings. “After 12 years of conflict, losing loved ones is a familiar anxiety,” Libyan-Canadian doctor Alaa Murabit said in an Instagram post. “What we could not have imagined is the scale. Losing friends and loved ones, their children and their parents all at once. Worse yet has been imagining them in those last terrifying moments together.”

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[ Libya floods: Aid effort overcomes east-west rift ]

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Residents have described bodies washing up from the sea. “I fear that the city will be infected with an epidemic due to the large number of bodies under the rubble and in the water,” said Derna’s mayor, Abdulmenam al-Ghaithi.

Damage caused by the flooding has made access to the city difficult for rescue teams and organisations attempting to send aid. Drone footage shows that some areas remain under water.

Libya – a north African country of about seven million people – has in effect been a failed state since the ousting of dictator Muammar Gadafyin 2011. It is divided between rival governments and militias.

In Geneva, World Meteorological Organization secretary general Petteri Taalas said such a large death toll could have been avoided. “If there would have been a normally operating meteorological service, they could have issued warnings,” he said. “The emergency management authorities would have been able to carry out evacuation of the people. And we could have avoided most of the human casualties.”