Up to 20,000 dead: the number of victims in Libya is rising dramatically

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“We expect a very high number of casualties. Based on the destroyed districts in the city of Darna, 18,000 to 20,000 deaths could occur,” Mayor Abdel-Moneim al-Gheithy told Arabic television channel Al-Arabija.

Storm “Daniel” hit the North African country on Sunday. Two dams broke near Darna and entire neighborhoods of the city, which has a population of 100,000, were washed into the sea.

Desperate cry for more help

Rescue teams continued to search for survivors in the rubble for days after the accident. But the hope of finding people alive diminishes by the hour. Recovered victims were buried in body bags in mass graves. According to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), more than 30,000 people have become homeless in Darna alone. 10,000 people have been missing since Monday, but it is unclear how many of them have been found dead or alive since then. UN Emergency Relief Coordinator Martin Griffiths said: “Entire neighborhoods have disappeared from the map.” The situation is ‘shocking and heartbreaking’.

Eyewitnesses at the scene reported to the German news agency that Darna was still “full of corpses”. Help is urgently needed. The east of the city in particular is further cut off from the rest. In some cases, communication links were completely lost.

A Libyan doctor working at a clinic near Darna told British broadcaster BBC: “We just need people who understand the situation: logistical help, dogs that can smell people and pick them out of the ground. We just need humanitarian aid, people who really know what they are doing.”

Rescue is difficult

The situation on the ground poses enormous challenges for rescue teams. Access roads were completely washed away and central bridges were buried under masses of mud. According to Arab media reports, a team specializing in epidemics is also heading to the civil war country.

Numerous countries have offered assistance. Libya had previously submitted a request for international assistance. Aid organization Doctors Without Borders announced the arrival of an emergency team. It consists of logistics and medical staff. They also bring emergency equipment to treat the injured and body bags for the Libyan Red Crescent. Further help comes from neighboring countries Egypt, Tunisia and Algeria, but also from Turkey. France, the Netherlands and Italy also offered support. The United Nations has announced emergency aid worth ten million dollars.

Libya’s vulnerability is becoming clear

Observers blame authorities for the scale of the disaster in the civil war country. This also shows how difficult the situation is for rescue teams and journalists on the ground, writes Libya expert Wolfram Lacher on the X platform (formerly Twitter).

Since the fall of Muammar al-Gaddafi in 2011, numerous conflicting parties have been vying for influence. Currently, two hostile governments – one based in the East and the other in the West – are vying for power. All diplomatic attempts to peacefully resolve the civil war, which continues to this day, have so far failed. Infrastructure measures were postponed for decades.

Observers also fear that anger over the disaster will spread to the streets. “The shock, which could turn into open anger in the coming weeks, is comparable to what the uprisings caused in early 2011,” expert Jalel Harchaoui writes about X.

World Weather Organization Secretary General Petteri Taalas believes the number of casualties is due to the lack of a functioning early warning system. If a weather service had warned of the approaching storm, emergency services could have conducted evacuations, Taalas said. “We could have avoided most of the casualties.”

(SDA)

Source: Blick