"As soon as we heard about this awful tragedy, people began a spontaneous campaign in Tajoura to help, with no state backing at all," said Mohannad Bennour in the eastern suburb of Tripoli, the capital.
He said that since Monday, donations of "nearly 70,000 dinars (13,500 euros) have been sent in, more than 20,000 dinars on Friday alone".
"People are handing in food, cleaning and hygiene products, towels, medicine... everything necessary for babies and women, and also clothing," the 30-year-old added.
After Storm Daniel hit the east of the country on Sunday, two dams upstream from Derna burst, sending a wall of water into the wadi or dry riverbed that divides the port city of 100,000 people.
The devastation was apocalyptic. Entire neighbourhoods and those who lived there were swept into the Mediterranean.
Othman Abdeljalil, the health minister in the administration that runs eastern Libya, has put the provisional death toll at 3,166. But the final number is likely to be far higher.
Many survivors of the disaster now find themselves homeless, and those who can have left the area.
- Political split -
The International Organization of Migration puts the number of people in eastern Libya displaced by the floods at 38,000 -- 30,000 in Derna alone.
"Getting lifesaving supplies to people and preventing a secondary health crisis is essential," Martin Griffiths, UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, posted on X, formerly Twitter.
But getting aid to those who need it most is made more complicated by the east-west political split in Libya.
The country today has two rival administrations, one in the capital Tripoli in the west, the UN-recognised government of Prime Minister Abdelhamid Dbeibah, and another in the east, affiliated with military strongman Khalifa Haftar.
Setting their differences aside, ordinary Libyans are mobilising in the face of the tragedy. Across the country fundraising is under way, and volunteer aid workers have rushed to the disaster area.
Many of those volunteers are hoping that the sense of solidarity will last.
In the Hay Al-Andalous district of Tripoli, Bader Marii came to drop off packs of water on the esplanade of the Ben Fadel Mosque, where two large trucks were already almost full.
Aid for the stricken population of Derna must keep on coming, because the country's split means "it will take double the time it would take in normal conditions" to rebuild in the disaster area, he said.
"Governments have a habit of letting time go by with no one calling them to account," added the Tripoli native in his fifties.
"It's like that in Libya. May God help us," he said, raising his hands skywards.
- The people act -
In the city centre, culture ministry employee Nouri el-Makhlou, 43, has been coordinating aid donations for a convoy due to leave for the east on Sunday morning.
The aid on board has been donated "by families from all over Libya who contacted us wanting to help".
This spontaneous outpouring of solidarity comes against a backdrop of chaotic mobilisation by the rival authorities in east and west which are already apportioning blame for the tragedy.
The prosecutor general visited Derna on Friday and pledged that those responsible for the disaster would be held to account.
Civil society groups that have struggled to keep going amid official harassment acted quickly and are already on the scene to help in the aftermath.
"The political elite on all sides has systematically and deliberately shut down civil society organisations and persecuted its members," said Elham Saudi, director of the group Lawyers For Justice in Libya.
She said that to the politicians "civil society is a threat. It exposes their shortcomings and fills the deficit they create."
Saudi believes civil society will ensure that those responsible for the tragedy in Derna are judged.
"It is important that this moment marks the end of the culture of impunity in Libya," she said.
International aid arrives in flood-hit Libya
Paris (AFP) Sept 16, 2023 -
International aid is arriving in Libya from the UN, Europe and Middle Eastern countries, offering some relief to thousands after flooding submerged the port city of Derna.
- The World Health Organization said "the bodies of 3,958 people have been recovered and identified", with 9,000 more still missing, as it announced 29 tonnes of aid had arrived in the eastern city of Benghazi, enough to help 250,000 people.
The aid includes essential medicines and emergency surgical supplies, as well as body bags to allow corpses to be moved and the deceased to be given a "dignified burial".
- The UN humanitarian affairs office (OCHA) immediately released $10 million from the UN's Central Emergency Response Fund and launched an appeal for $71.4 million aiming to help 250,000 people and "prevent a secondary health crisis".
- The Red Crescent has sent a humanitarian shipment of 40 tons, including tents, blankets, carpets, hygiene items and food packages along with three rescue teams, the head of Iran's Red Crescent said Saturday.
- The Italian military vessel San Marco arrived off Derna on Saturday, carrying two search and rescue helicopters, 100 tents capable of housing 1,000 people, 5,000 blankets, sanitary equipment, eight pumps to evacuate water and civil engineering equipment.
- On Saturday, Romania sent a first aid plane carrying foodstuffs and mattresses. Six flights are planned, carrying a total of 55 tonnes of aid.
- Two Turkish military vessels docked in Libya on Saturday carrying three field hospitals, food supplies, tents, shelters and medical equipment, as well as 360 personnel from the medical corps, the Turkish relief agency Afad, the coastguard and the fire brigade.
Another ship was due to leave Izmir on Saturday. Three cargo planes took off on Tuesday to bring aid to the victims. Turkey, which was hard hit in February by a powerful earthquake that killed over 50,000 people, is a close ally of the Tripoli government, which it has supported, including militarily, since 2020.
- Egypt has sent three military aircraft with rescue teams and aid, including medical supplies and tents. On Wednesday, it also began setting up camps near its border with Libya for "our Libyan brothers who have lost their homes".
Previously Egypt has always refused to set up reception camps for refugees who might arrive on its territory.
- On Tuesday, Algeria sent large amounts of humanitarian aid, consisting of foodstuffs, medical equipment, clothing and tents via an airlift by eight military aircraft, according to a press release from the presidency.
A team of 113 civil protection agents including divers and doctors specialising in disaster medicine is also in Derna.
- Jordan on Tuesday sent a plane with a relief team and food, tents and blankets. On Thursday, a second aircraft brought a team of 28 people specialised in disaster relief, including five doctors.
- Germany has sent two planes carrying 30 tonnes of equipment.
- France has dispatched two Airbus A400M aircraft. The first on Wednesday, carrying around forty rescue workers and several tonnes of medical equipment, including a field hospital, was bound for Al-Bayda, one of the areas worst affected by the floods to the north-east of Benghazi.
A second airbus was sent on Thursday with additional aid.
A German C130J, with Franco-German freight, left on Saturday.
- On Wednesday, the UK announced an initial aid package of 1 million pounds ($1.24 million) for Libya, without giving any further details about the form it would take.
- More aid has come from the United Arab Emirates, the Palestinian authority and Hungary.
Libya's deadly floods: what we know
Tripoli (AFP) Sept 16, 2023 -
Flash flooding in east Libya caused by Storm Daniel tore through the coastal city of Derna, leaving more than 3,000 people dead, around 10,000 missing and entire neighbourhoods in ruins.
This is what we know so far about the extreme storm and flash flooding that hit the war-torn North African country.
- Dams burst -
On Sunday afternoon, Storm Daniel made landfall on Libya's east coast after earlier lashing Greece, Bulgaria and Turkey.
It touched Benghazi before veering towards the Jabal al-Akhdar district towns of Shahat, Al-Marj, Al-Bayda, Susa and Derna, devastating that city of 100,000 people.
Derna lies in a river wadi 900 kilometres (560 miles) east of the capital Tripoli.
Overnight, two dams on Wadi Derna burst, unleashing torrents of water that destroyed bridges and swept away entire neighbourhoods before spilling into the Mediterranean.
Roads that were already in a poor state were cut, and access to some affected areas became impossible.
- Huge toll -
Officials in the east of the divided country give different toll estimates, with health minister of the eastern-based administration, Othman Abdeljalil, on Saturday putting the number of lives lost at 3,166.
However, most fear the figure will be far higher.
The World Health Organization (WHO) said "the bodies of 3,958 people have been recovered and identified", with 9,000 more still missing.
The International Organization for Migration on Friday said "over 38,640" people had been left homeless in eastern Libya, 30,000 of them in Derna alone.
The UN humanitarian agency OCHA said on Thursday an estimated 884,000 people directly impacted by the storm and flash floods in five provinces need assistance.
- Authorities mobilise -
The authorities in Libya's divided east and west, faced by the appalling human and material devastation caused by the floods, have come to the aid of those stricken by the disaster.
Aid convoys from Tripolitania in the west were sent to Derna.
The internationally recognised Tripoli government of Prime Minister Abdelhamid Dbeibah said it was sending two air ambulances and a helicopter, as well as rescuers, 87 doctors, canine search teams and workers to try to restore electricity.
The head of the eastern-based government, Oussama Hamad, said that "from Saturday, new measures will be applied in the disaster zone" to search for bodies and any survivors.
The area would be closed off to civilians and security services, he said, adding that "only Libyan and foreign search teams and investigators will have access".
- International response -
Relief missions have rushed aid to the disaster-hit country over the course of the week.
On Saturday, an AFP correspondent saw two aid-laden planes, one from the United Arab Emirates and another from Iran, land in Benghazi, west of Derna.
The WHO announced 29 tonnes of health supplies had arrived in Benghazi.
The United Nations has launched an appeal for more than $71 million to aid the hundreds of thousands in need.
The world body also called for a sea corridor to be established for emergency relief and evacuations.
Assistance from Finland, Germany, Romania has been dispatched. Egypt, Jordan and Kuwait have also sent planes carrying aid.
Algeria, France, Italy, Qatar, Tunisia the United States have all also offered help.
- 'Medicane' -
Storm Daniel gathered strength during an unusually hot summer and earlier lashed Turkey, Bulgaria and Greece, flooding vast areas and killing at least 27 people.
Climate experts say it bears the features of tropical cyclones and hurricanes known as "medicanes" which tend to form in the Mediterranean near the North African coast.
Medicanes form once or twice per year on average, according to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
While scientists generally avoid direct links between individual weather events and long-term global warming, Storm Daniel "is illustrative of the type of devastating flooding event we may expect increasingly in the future", said Lizzie Kendon, a climate science professor at the University of Bristol.
The EU's climate monitoring service Copernicus said rising global sea surface temperatures were driving record levels of heat across the globe, with 2023 likely to be the warmest in human history.
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