Around 2,000 people have died and 10,000 are believed missing after Storm Daniel dumped so much rain on Libya’s northeast that two dams collapsed sending water flowing into already inundated areas.
“The death toll is huge and around 10,000 are reported missing,” Tamer Ramadan, head of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) delegation in Libya, said Tuesday during a press briefing in Geneva.
As many as 6,000 people are missing from the eastern city of Derna alone, Othman Abduljalil, health minister in Libya’s eastern parliament-backed government, told Libya’s Almasar TV.
Abduljalil toured Derna on Monday, describing parts of it as a “ghost town.”
“The situation was catastrophic… The bodies are still lying in many places,” Abduljalil told Libya’s Almasar TV.
“There are families still stuck inside their homes and there are victims under the rubble… I expect people have been washed away into the sea, and tomorrow (Tuesday) morning, we’ll find many of them,” he said.
