More than 43,000 people are displaced after the floods that devastated eastern Libya last week, especially in the city of Derna, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) announced this Thursday.
“According to the latest IOM estimates, 43,059 people have been displaced by flooding in northeastern Libya,” the United Nations agency said in its latest report on the situation in eastern Libya.
The passage of Storm Daniel through the country, on the night of September 10 to 11, caused flooding and the destruction of two dams created a wave of water similar to a ‘tsunami’, which flooded and destroyed the city of Derna.
Government authorities and humanitarian agencies reported that the death toll varies between around 4,000 and 11,000, with thousands missing, in addition to more than 43,000 people who had to leave their homes.
According to the organization, “the lack of water supply led many displaced people to leave Derna and go to other cities in the east and west.”
The Libyan authorities asked the city’s population to stop using water from the local distribution network, justifying the request with the contamination of the network due to flooding.
The UN announced earlier this week that its agencies, particularly the World Health Organization (WHO), are working to “prevent the spread of disease and avoid a second devastating crisis in the region,” warning of the risk arising from the ” contaminated water and lack of hygiene.
The urgent needs of the displaced include “food, clean water, mental health and psychosocial support,” the IOM added.
On the other hand, mobile communications and Internet networks were restored this morning in Derna, after a 24-hour interruption, the Libyan authorities announced.
Communications were cut off on Tuesday and journalists were asked to leave the city, a day after a citizen demonstration demanding that authorities in the east of the country be held responsible for the disaster.
The authorities argued that there had been a “breakage of the optical fibers”, but according to analysts, it was a deliberate cut to impose a “blackout” after extensive media coverage of the demonstration the previous day.
Thousands of Libyans gathered outside the al-Shabana mosque in Derna on Monday in the first mass demonstration since the floods, calling for a swift investigation into the disaster and urgent reconstruction of the city.
In the evening, the city’s former mayor, Abdel-Moneim al-Gaithi, claimed that protesters had set fire to his house.
The Libyan Prosecutor’s Office opened an investigation on Saturday into the collapse of the two dams, built in the 1970s, and the allocation of funds for their maintenance.
Source: TSF
