2023-09-11 17:28:51
“Hold on, hold on!” » In a video shared on social networks, the desperate cries of a resident of El Beida, in eastern Libya, launched at a man carried away by torrents of water towards the unknown, alone sum up the dramatic situation caused by the passage of storm Daniel. In this city located in the heart of the mountainous region of Jabal Al-Akhbar, the fourth in the country in number of inhabitants, the rains were so intense that the streets became powerful streams carrying everything, or almost, on their passage.
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After violently swept across Greece, Turkey and Bulgaria, killing at least 27 people, the meteorological phenomenon, described by experts as“extreme in terms of the amount of water that fell”, continued its way towards North Africa. During the night of Saturday September 9 to Sunday September 10, it reached the coasts of eastern Libya, generating torrential rains and violent winds over a vast region between Benghazi and Tobruk, and causing significant human and material damage.
On the phone from Derna, 100 km east of El Beida, the prime minister of Libya’s eastern government, not recognized by the international community, Oussama Hammad, told Libyan media Al-Marsad that the toll in this disaster city in the east “exceeds 2,000 deaths” and “thousands of missing”. It indicates that “entire neighborhoods” were washed away by the waters. On a video, this city of more than 100,000 inhabitants seems to have been cut in two by a mudslide from the mountains that overlook it to the sea that borders it. A previous report given by the spokesman for General Khalifa Haftar, the head of the parallel executive based in Benghazi, reported“At least 150 people have been killed due to flooding caused by Storm Daniel.”
The numerous videos shared by Libyan Internet users attest to the violence of the storm. In the El Beïda region, the flood exceeded 2 meters in places, flooding houses and sweeping away parked cars. In other places, the water has gutted the roads, making it impossible for vehicles to pass and considerably complicating rescue operations. Access to electricity and means of communication has also been largely affected.
emergency help
The Libyan television channel Al Hurra was able to confirm the deaths of at least 25 people from medical sources, without giving further details. Other local media report numerous deaths in different towns and dozens of people missing, including eight soldiers who were trying to help the victims. The Libyan Red Crescent announced that one of its members, Hussein Buzenouba, had died “while he was trying to get a stranded family out”.
Faced with the scale of the disaster, the Libyan National Army (ANL) was mobilized on the instructions of General Khalifa Haftar, who controls the east of the country, to come to the aid of those affected by the deluge. An envelope of 200 million dinars (about 38 million euros) has also been released to support the many municipalities affected.
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In the west of the country, the calamity also caused a reaction. The government of national unity, recognized by the international community and installed in Tripoli – and which has no base in the east – called on Sunday “all public and competent authorities” has “take urgent and exceptional measures and use all their capacities to deal with the serious damage caused to public and private properties in the affected municipalities”.
Its interior minister, Imed Trabelsi, has also instructed the security forces to bring together 1,000 people from different corps “in order to move to support the security directorates in the eastern region”. Several convoys of emergency vehicles thus left Tripolitania on Monday to go to Cyrenaica, smoothing the time of a disaster the political divisions which usually undermine Libya.
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