Senior leaders in Libya have requested that the attorney general conduct an urgent investigation into the disastrous floods that have killed tens of thousands of people, including any claims that the local government imposed a curfew the night Storm Daniel hit.
The Libyan Red Crescent gave the highest estimate to date from an official source, putting the death toll at over 11,000 with close to 20,000 still missing. The floodwaters, according to the report, washed about 2,000 bodies into the sea.
20,000 people may have died, according to officials in the port city of Derna, including the mayor, Abdulmenam al-Ghaithi. There have been at least 5,500 confirmed fatalities.
Although many have been interred in mass graves, body bags—which are necessary to prevent illness from unburied bodies—remain one of the city’s worst shortages, along with potable water. Rescue personnel are searching through the rubble and ruins left by the floods now that they have access to the city.
Both the eastern-based president of the presidential council of Libya, Mohamed al-Menfi, and the western-based interim prime minister of the Tripoli-based government, Abdel Hamid Dabaiba, separately requested the investigation. Menfi stated that his goal for the investigation was “to hold accountable everyone who made a mistake or neglected by refraining from acting or taking actions that led to the collapse of the city’s dams.”
Despite the fact that Libya has been ripped apart by rival governments for years, Al-Siddiq Al-Sour, the attorney general, is one of the few remaining individuals whose authority is said to extend to the entire nation.
Concerns about whether warnings regarding the condition of the two dams were disregarded, the inability to find replacement contractors to maintain the dam following Libya’s 2011 civil war, and the specific directives given by the police and security directorate on the night of the flood are all causing a tsunami of ire.
When violence broke out in Libya in 2011, a Turkish company called Arsel, which had been hired to work on the dams, departed the country and hasn’t been seen since. A portion of the 39 million dinars set aside in 2003 for the dam’s upkeep was later removed from the ministry of water resources. According to information provided to Dabaiba at a meeting with the ministry, the building site became abandoned when the firm departed the country and its machinery was taken.
Any investigation must look at the events that led to the detention of the front-runner in the upcoming municipal elections in Derna, which forced the cancellation of those polls and placed the city under military rule.
Derna has been under a number of different administrations, but the Libyan National Army, led by the autocratic Gen. Khalifa Haftar and his sons, now controls the entire region.
On Wednesday afternoon, after some delays brought on by the suspension of internet access and impassable roads, foreign supplies began to arrive in the town. On Wednesday, rescue teams were able to pull 39 people—including a whole family—out of the rubble. Facebook and other social media platforms were utilised to announce the locations of persons in need of rescue.
Residents of Derna were well aware of the danger posed by the condition of the dams and the Wadi Derna River, which passes directly through the city without an embankment.
There are allegations that members of the Libyan National Army security directorate may be attempting to hide the fact that as Storm Daniel hit on Sunday night, its members appeared on TV to advise civilians to adhere to the curfew at home rather than flee.
However, according to Wolfram Lacquer, a Libya expert based in Germany, it appeared that the local police had met the mayor on Sunday as the storm approached and that messages were then broadcast from vans across the town calling for an evacuation of areas that were likely to be affected, though the call may have been met with resistance.
He claimed that it appeared that the dam closest to the city had not undergone maintenance since 2011 and that funds that had been allotted had not been utilized. After 2011, a large number of foreign contractors refrained from going back to Libya, either because they were pursuing compensation claims or because they did not think the nation was secure.
“Already, we can see the key political protagonists – the rival governments and Haftar – expend a lot of effort on shaping public perceptions on who is responding and providing assistance. Menfi, for instance, called for the inquiry on the cause of the dam’s collapse to cover any evidence of the obstruction to aid reaching Derna,” Lacquer said.
The two aggregate dams have a clay core that has been compacted and stone and rock sides. One km south of the city’s centre is the Al-Bilad Dam, which can hold around 1.5 million cubic metres of water. The Abu Dam, which is 13 kilometres south of the first dam, can hold about 22.5 million cubic metres.
The beach in Derna was covered in belongings that had been carried from homes by the torrent that quickly formed when water flowed into the river from the Green mountains.
According to the International Organisation for Migration, the floods have forced at least 30,000 people from their homes in Derna and damaged or destroyed several of the city’s access roads. The local government was able to remove some routes, and humanitarian convoys have been able to enter the city.
Rescue teams from Egypt, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, and Qatar have landed in Libya. Most people have now arrived in the city. While Egypt has gathered a near army of rescue trucks that were paraded in front of the country’s president, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, before crossing the border, Turkey is sending a ship bringing supplies to set up two field hospitals.
