2023-09-12 16:13:15
The smell of death fills the place,” a journalist reported from Darna on Tuesday. No other area was hit as hard by the storm that hit eastern Libya on Sunday. Storm Daniel brought the worst rainfall in decades – and unleashed deadly floods in Darna. There, two dams burst under the water masses. The images and reports now emerging from the port city paint a picture of unprecedented horror: morgues overflowing with dead people who have not yet been identified; People who have to sleep under the open sky, desperately waiting for help or looking for relatives. According to local authorities, entire neighborhoods and their residents were swept away by the floods. Residents reported on Tuesday that countless bodies were still buried. Parts of the city, which has been declared a disaster area, are flooded.
There is widespread agreement that Libya is the worst disaster in decades, if not centuries. Local authorities expect more than 3,000 deaths. The International Committee of the Red Cross said on Tuesday that a total of around 10,000 people were missing across Libya.
Darna, home to around 100,000 people, is largely cut off from the outside world because key access roads have been destroyed. The situation is still confusing on Tuesday and travel for rescue teams is complicated. A local news agency reported from Darna early on Tuesday morning that no team had yet arrived.
The Government of National Unity in Tripoli, western Libya, sent aid on Monday, even though a rival government is in charge in the eastern Libyan disaster area. Both the leadership in the capital under Prime Minister Abdul Hamid Dbaiba and those in the east, which is dominated by military leader Khalifa Haftar, showed support for the state and ordered several days of national mourning. But Libya’s political division is likely to complicate rescue work and reconstruction.
Ankara announces aid
Support is now expected to come from abroad, including from Turkey, which is actually allied with the western Libyan camp but now also has a functioning connection to the east. Ankara announced it would send three planes carrying rescue and recovery teams, two search and rescue vehicles and two rescue boats to Libya, as well as tents, blankets and supplies. The United Arab Emirates and Egypt, both allies of the eastern camp, also want to provide help. Addresses of solidarity and promises of aid also came from the West. The desperate of Darna could use any help. Not only do they have to deal with the impact of the disaster on the living, but they also have to quickly bury the dead because religious customs require it.
As the horrors of the present recede, the pain of older wounds could also be intensified by the floods. There was already dissatisfaction in the port city, which, like all of Libya, was gripped by violence and chaos after the overthrow of the tyrant Muammar al-Gaddafi in 2011, even before the catastrophe. “Darna is neglected; many people there have seen their homeland under occupation for years,” explains Wolfram Lacher from the Science and Politics Foundation. The long-established families in Darna were displaced in the course of the recent wars by tribes from the surrounding area that had allied themselves with Haftar.
The warlord captured the city after a brutal siege in 2019 under the pretext of fighting terrorism. Darna had meanwhile been controlled by the “Islamic State” (IS), but even before the Haftar campaign it was being fought by rival jihadists and non-extremist forces from the city. According to Lacher, Haftar’s security authorities in Darna are particularly paranoid and aggressive. “The few resources that arrive in the city largely seep into the corrupt local leadership at the mercy of Haftar,” says the Libya expert. The rejection of the military leader could now increase even further.
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According to Western observers, the storm disaster should not only be a wake-up call for his opposing government. Because just like the broken dams in Darna, the entire infrastructure throughout Libya is no longer able to cope with the storms of today. The fact that it has continued to deteriorate due to the rampant corruption and power struggles of the recent past may be one reason for this.
At the same time, the burden of extreme weather phenomena is likely to continue to increase. According to scientists, climate change threatens Libyans not only through increasing desertification and violent sandstorms. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is warning of a trend in the Mediterranean region that has already become apparent elsewhere, for example in Greece: heavy rains and spring tides threaten to occur more frequently and become more intense.
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