Hundreds of people have protested in the eastern Libyan city of Derna, venting anger against authorities and demanding accountability one week after a flood killed thousands of residents and destroyed entire neighborhoods.
Protesters on Monday took aim at officials, including the head of the eastern-based Libyan parliament, Aguila Saleh, during the demonstration outside the city’s Al Sahaba Mosque. Some sat on its roof in front of its golden dome, a Derna landmark.
“Aguila we don’t want you! All Libyans are brothers!” protesters chanted, calling for national unity in a country left politically fractured by more than a decade of conflict and chaos.
Later in the evening, angry protesters set fire to the house of the man who was Derna mayor at the time of the flood, Abdulmenam al-Ghaithi, his office manager told the Reuters news agency.
Hichem Abu Chkiouat, a minister in the eastern Libyan government, said Ghaithi has been suspended from his post.
Libya has two rival administrations, an internationally-recognised one based in the capital Tripoli in the country’s west, and another self-proclaimed government based in the eastern city of Benghazi, backed by renegade general Khalifa Haftar.
The protest on Monday is the first significant gathering since the flood, which engulfed Derna after two dams outside the city gave way as a result of a severe storm, unleashing a torrential downpour.
Said Mansour, a student taking part in the protest, said he wanted an urgent investigation into the collapse of the dams, which “made us lose thousands of our beloved people”.
Taha Miftah, 39, said the protest was a message that “the governments have failed to manage the crisis”, noting the parliament was especially to blame.
He called for an international inquiry into the disaster and “for reconstruction under international supervision”.
Since thousands of individuals are still missing, it is still unclear how many people have died in total. Officials have reported a wide range of casualty totals. 3,922 deaths have been confirmed by the World Health Organization.
Last week, Saleh made an effort to divert attention away from the authorities by characterizing the flood as a “unprecedented natural disaster” and advising people to stop thinking about what could have or should have been done.
The city’s vulnerability to flooding and the urgent need to maintain the dams that protected it were both highlighted in a hydrologist’s research article published last year, which observers have pointed out as prior warnings.
