The latest official report shows 3,922 deaths. As for the data available on the missing, they remain approximate.
More than 43,000 people have been displaced following deadly floods that devastated eastern Libya, notably the city of Derna, the International Organization for Migration (IOM), the migration agency, announced on Thursday, September 21 the United Nations (UN).
“43,059 people have been displaced by floods in northeastern Libya,” the IOM said in its latest report on the situation in eastern Libya after the devastating passage of Storm Daniel in the night from September 10 to 11.
The latest official report from the UN agency shows 3,922 deaths. As for the data available on the missing, they remain approximate. The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, for its part, reports an “enormous” number of deaths and 10,000 missing.
According to the IOM, “the lack of water supply would have pushed many displaced people to leave Derna for other cities in the East and West”.
The Libyan authorities had asked the city’s population to no longer use water from the local distribution network, contaminated, according to them, by floodwaters.
The UN announced earlier this week that its agencies, notably the World Health Organization (WHO), were working to “prevent the spread of disease and avoid a second devastating crisis in the region”, warning of a risk coming from “contaminated water and lack of hygiene”.
Needs for water, food, and psychosocial support
The urgent needs of displaced people include “food, drinking water, mental health, and psychosocial support”, added the IOM.
Furthermore, telecommunications networks were restored during the night from Wednesday to Thursday in Derna after a twenty-four-hour outage, announced the Libyan authorities. Connections were cut on Tuesday and journalists were asked to leave the stricken town the day after a demonstration by residents of Derna demanding accountability from the authorities in the east of the country, responsible, according to them, for the disaster.
The authorities spoke of a “cutting of optical fibers”, but, according to analysts and Internet users, it was a deliberate cut intended to impose a blackout after extensive media coverage of the demonstration the day before. The Prime Minister of the government recognized by the UN and based in Tripoli, Abdel Hamid Dbeibah, announced for his part on his X account (formerly Twitter) the return of telecommunications in the city, specifying that technicians had succeeded in restoring a new optical fiber connection.
Wracked by divisions since the fall of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, Libya is governed by two rival administrations: one in Tripoli (West), led by Mr. Dbeibah, the other in the East, embodied by Parliament and affiliated with the camp of powerful Marshal Khalifa Haftar.
The chaos in this country has relegated the maintenance of vital infrastructure to the background, such as the Derna dams, which had cracks in 1998 that were never repaired.
The Libyan Attorney General, Al-Seddik al-Sour, in charge of the investigation into the tragedy, promised “rapid results” in an interview Wednesday evening on Libyan television Libya al-Ahrar. He added that alleged culprits of corruption or negligence in connection with this disaster had “already been identified”, without revealing their names.
