DERNA: A global aid effort for Libya gathered pace Thursday after a tsunami-sized flash flood killed nearly 4,000 people, with thousands more missing — a death figure the United Nations (UN) blamed in part on the legacy of years of war and chaos.
The enormous surge of flood water burst two upstream river dams late Sunday and reduced the city of Derna to an apocalyptic wasteland where the whole city blocks and untold numbers of Libyans were washed into the Mediterranean.
The water level suddenly rose within seconds, recounted one wounded survivor who said he was swept away with his mother in the late-night calamity before both managed to cling onto and scramble into an empty building downstream, AFP reported.
The unidentified man said from his hospital bed that the water was rising with them until they got to the 4th floor, the water was up to the 2nd floor.
He added that they could hear screams. From the window he saw vehicles and bodies being washed away.
Heart-wrenching scenes in Libya
Hundreds of body bags now line the mud-caked streets in Derna, awaiting mass burials, as grieving and traumatised residents search mangled buildings for missing relatives and bulldozers clear streets of debris and mountains of sand.
Martin Griffiths, UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, said that the scale of the flood disaster in the country is shocking and it is heartbreaking.
He said that whole neighbourhoods have been wiped off the map. Entire families, taken by surprise, were swept away in the water deluge. Thousands have died, tens of thousands are now homeless and many more remain missed.
