Hisham Shkewat, the Minister of Civil Aviation in the Libyan government appointed by the parliament and a member of the emergency committee, disclosed on Tuesday that a staggering quarter of the city of Derna has vanished in the wake of the devastating Cyclone Daniel.
Shkewat, in a telephonic conversation with Reuters, revealed the grim state of affairs: “We have not yet established a total death toll in Derna, but over a thousand bodies have been retrieved in the city post the floods. The situation is incredibly catastrophic.”
He further lamented, “The death toll is alarmingly high, with bodies scattered everywhere. I am not exaggerating when I claim that 25% of the city has simply disappeared, with numerous buildings having collapsed.”
Local Libyan medical sources have reported the death of approximately 2,800 individuals due to the floods that engulfed the eastern cities of Libya because of the Mediterranean Cyclone, Daniel, which struck the nation last Sunday.
Subsequent to the calamity, the Presidential Council in Libya formally declared Derna, Shahat, and Al Bayda in Cyrenaica in the east as disaster-stricken regions, primarily due to the rampaging floods.
In a press conference broadcasted on television, Ahmed Al-Mismari, the spokesperson for the Libyan army, shed light on the origins of this disaster, attributing it to the dam collapses over Derna. This led to entire neighborhoods, along with their residents, being swept into the sea.
Al-Mismari estimated the number of missing individuals to range between five and six thousand.
