More than 5,300 dead counted to date, civil aviation minister says
Tens of thousands of people had been made homeless, he said, appealing for international aid and adding that Libya did not have the experience to deal with the aftermath of such a disaster.
Mustafa Salem said no one had been found alive from his entire extended family, which lived in homes close together near the river valley, opposite a mosque. ”People were asleep and no one was ready,” he said. “We lost 30 people so far, 30 members of the same family. We haven’t found anyone.” The devastation was clear from high points above Derna, where the densely populated city centre, built along a seasonal riverbed, was now a wide, flat crescent of earth with stretches of muddy water gleaming in the sun, all its building swept away.Satellite photographs of the city from before and after the disaster showed that what had been a narrow waterway through the city centre was now a wide scar, with all the buildings that had run along it gone.
Libya’s Tripoli-based prime minister, Abdulhamid al-Dbeibah, called the floods an unprecedented catastrophe. Libya’s Presidential Council head Mohammed al-Menfi has called for national unity.
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