'Sea is constantly dumping bodies': fears Libya flood death toll may hit 20,000

Earlier DU thread: More than 5,300 are feared dead, thousands more are missing as eastern Libya is devastated by floods

______________________________________________________________________

Source: The Guardian

‘Sea is constantly dumping bodies’: fears Libya flood death toll may hit 20,000

Full scale of devastation in north African nation still not clear as aid agencies struggle to reach cut-off areas

Patrick Wintour Diplomatic editor
Wed 13 Sep 2023 12.20 BST
First published on Wed 13 Sep 2023 11.45 BST

International aid is slowly starting to reach the devastated port city of Derna as an inquest starts into how as many as 20,000 people might have perished when Storm Daniel hit the northern coast of Libya on Saturday night.

Ten thousand people had been declared missing by official aid agencies such as the Libyan Red Crescent, but the new, ominous higher estimate of 20,000 deaths came from the director of Al-Bayda Medical Center, Abdul Rahim Maziq.

Corpses still litter the street, and drinkable water is in short supply. Whole families have been wiped out by the storm and with the remoteness of some villages and the rudimentary nature of municipal government, it will take time for the death toll to be confirmed.

But the scale of devastation appeared even worse than officials had initially predicted. The “sea is constantly dumping dozens of bodies”, said Hichem Abu Chkiouat, the minister of civil aviation in the administration that runs eastern Libya, adding that reconstruction would cost billions of dollars.

-snip-

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/sep/13/libya-flood-death-toll

Alternate non-walled link: https://archive.li/7qlNJ