Flooding death toll soars to 11,300 in Libya s coastal city of Derna euronews.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from euronews.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Authorities in Derna race to collect and bury the growing number of flood victims before bodies turn the Libyan coastal city into a massive contamination site.
Rescue teams are battling to help survivors and locate the dead five days after devastating flooding hit the eastern Libyan city of Derna. The death toll in the coastal city has now soared to 11,300, and thousands are still missing.
Images taken by satellite show the physical devastation from a flood that killed more than 11,000 people in the eastern Libyan city of Derna. Two dams above Derna burst early Monday under the pressure from rain dropped by a storm. The pent-up water swept blocks of low-lying downtown Derna out to the Mediterranean Sea. Many said they heard loud explosions as the dams exploded. A flood several meters (many feet) high rolled down a mountainside into the city. Untold numbers are buried under mud and debris that includes overturned cars and chunks of concrete. The death toll soared over 11,300 as search efforts continue, Marie el-Drese, secretary-general of the Libyan Red Crescent, told a news agency. She said that an additional 10,100 had been reported missing. Health authorities previously put the death toll in Derna at 5,500. The floods have displaced at least 30,000 people in Derna, according to the UN’s International Organization for Migration, and several thousand others were fo