Receive free updates on Libya

We will send you a myFT daily summary email summarizing the latest Libya news every morning.

More than 5,000 bodies have been found in this eastern Libyan town devastated by floods that swept away buildings, roads and bridges, Libyan officials and aid workers said.

Osama Ali, a spokesperson for the Ambulance and Emergency Center in Libya, said the number of dead dolls in Derna, where two dams collapsed after a torrential storm, had reached 5,100 people.

The town of 100,000 was hit hardest after Storm Daniel hit the North African country over the weekend. THE flood The situation in Derna was made worse by collapsing dams, officials said, with torrents of water rushing through the town and destroying entire neighborhoods.

Hichem Abu Chkiouat, civil aviation minister in the administration that rules eastern Libya, told Reuters the death toll stood at 5,300, adding that it was expected to rise because “the sea constantly dumps dozens of bodies” in Derna, on Libya’s Mediterranean coast.

Officials in Libya, a dysfunctional state with rival governments in the east and west, gave varying figures for the death toll as it sought to find bodies hidden under rubble and mud. But thousands of people are believed to have died. The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) said on Tuesday that 10,000 people are believed to be missing.

Officials said rescue workers had difficulty reaching parts of Derna because main roads had been washed away and turned into rivers. Electricity and communications within the city were also cut.

Videos and images posted on social media show enormous destruction, with buildings reduced to rubble and vehicles overturned. Corpses in plastic body bags were lined up on the ground.

The International Organization for Migration said Wednesday that more than 30,000 people had been displaced by the flooding.

Libya has been wracked by years of chaos and conflict in the years since the overthrow of dictator Muammar Gaddafi after a popular uprising in 2011. That spiraled into civil war as rival factions carved up the country rich in oil into a mosaic of fiefdoms.

The country has competing governments based in Tripoli, the capital, and eastern Libya, which has been under the control for years of Khalifa Haftar, a renegade general who leads the Libyan national army.

The divisions have spilled over into public institutions, leaving the state weak and fractured. Western states generally do not engage with the eastern administration, as the UN-backed government in Tripoli is considered the internationally recognized authority.

Martin Griffiths, the UN’s humanitarian chief, said on social media that the storm had “cost thousands of lives” and that the UN was allocating $10 million in emergency funds to support relief efforts. .

US President Joe Biden said on Tuesday that Washington was sending emergency funds to agencies working on the disaster.

Turkey sent three cargo planes to the city of Benghazi, with 168 search and rescue specialists and other aid, including tents, generators, raincoats and torches. Neighboring Egypt also announced it would send soldiers and helicopters to help with reconstruction work.