“The sea never stops returning bodies”: the anguish of survivors and families of flood victims in Libya

The images are devastating. Corpses abandoned in the streets, people removing bodies from the rubble with their bare hands.

Direct witnesses to the horror told the BBC that entire neighborhoods and buildings were swept into the sea while people slept.

LOOK: 6 graphics that show the destruction caused by the catastrophic floods in Libya

And now “the sea is returning dozens of bodies,” said Hichem Abu Chkiouat, Minister of Civil Aviation and member of the Emergency Committee in eastern Libya.

This is the situation that exists in the port city of Derna after the floods caused by Storm Daniel that devastated the east of the country, leaving a trail of destruction with thousands of dead and missing.

Relatives desperately search for their loved ones in the hope of finding them alive or at least identifying their bodies for burial.

As emergency teams continue to work, in some areas of the city bodies wrapped in sheets are dumped in mass graves.

The death toll from flooding in eastern Libya continues to rise. Authorities say more than 5,000 bodies have been found in the city of Derna alone, while tens of thousands are already displaced in the surrounding area and the rest of the country.

Volunteers arrived in the area to help survivors.

“It’s a complete disaster. I’m really shocked,” said a doctor who traveled to Derna to treat the injured.

“As if a nuclear bomb had fallen”

Buildings and entire neighborhoods were swept away by the sea. (GET IMAGES).

The local media Derna Zoom posted on the social network X (formerly Twitter) that a quarter of the city was “completely annihilated”.

“It’s as if a nuclear bomb had fallen,” the message said.

Those who were able to communicate with family and friends in the affected area are heartbroken.

People are living the “Apocalypse”Libyan journalist Johr Ali told the BBC.

A friend found his nephew “dead in the street, thrown by water from his roof,” the reporter said.

Ali, who lives in exile in Istanbul due to attacks on journalists in Libya, said another of his friends lost his entire family in the disaster.

“His mother, his father, his two brothers, his sister Maryam, his wife (…) and his little 8-month-old son… They all died, his whole family died and he asks me what should do.”

In another case, Ali said a survivor told him he had seen “a woman hanging from streetlights because the floods took her away.”

“He died there,” Ali added.

The streets of Derna are covered in mud and debris and littered with overturned vehicles.

“People hear babies crying underground and don’t know how to get to them”said the journalist.

“It felt like a tsunami.”

The rains “dragged entire neighborhoods with their residents into the sea” (EPA).

Rescuer Kasim al Qatani told the BBC there is no clean water in Derna and medical supplies are scarce.

He added that Derna’s only hospital can no longer receive patients because “there are more than 700 bodies waiting in the hospital and it is not that big.”

Although the tragedy began with the intense rains caused by Storm Daniel, witnesses said the situation got out of control when they heard the explosion of a large dam that ended up expelling a gigantic torrent of water that “it felt like a tsunami”.

The information available so far indicates that the rains caused the collapse of two dams on the River Derna, “which dragged entire neighborhoods with their residents into the sea”, according to Ahmed Mismari, spokesman for the Libyan National Army, which controls the east. from Libya. the country. .

In addition to Derna, the cities of Benghazi, Susa and Al Marj, all in the east, as well as Misrata in the west, were also affected, amid the worst floods in the country in the last four decades.

A country divided in two

Rescue teams are working intensively in areas devastated by the floods. (GET IMAGES).

Libyan doctor Najib Tarhoni, who works at a hospital near Derna, urgently asked for help.

“I have friends here at the hospital who have lost most of their families… they have lost them all,” he told the BBC.

“We just need people who understand the situation: logistical help, dogs that can actually smell people and get them out of the ground. We just need humanitarian help, from people who really know what they are doing.”

There is also an urgent need for specialized forensic and rescue teams and other people dedicated to recovering bodies, the head of the Libyan Doctors’ Union, Mohammed al Ghoush, told Turkish media.

Rescue efforts were complicated by the fact that Libya is divided between rival governments and the country has been in conflict for more than a decade.

Faction fighting led to the abandonment of infrastructure and resulted in widespread poverty in a country with few resources and experience to deal with such catastrophes.

Victims and rescue teams are asking for humanitarian help. (GET IMAGES).

Source: Elcomercio