A month ago, on the night of September 10 to 11, Hurricane Daniel and the explosion of dams caused unprecedented flooding in Libya. The town of Derna in the east of the country woke up to almost a quarter of its buildings destroyed, thousands of victims and missing people, chaos. And very quickly, worrying and contradictory figures circulated on the human toll. There was talk then of 10,000 dead, but today, only 4,000 bodies have been found.
2 mins
With our special correspondent in Tripoli, Ariane Lavrilleux
The day after the disaster, rescuers discovered 1,500 lifeless bodies. But the toll would be six times worse, according to the Libyan representative at the time of the International Federation of Red Cross Societies, the structure which brings together volunteers from around the world. He then estimated the number of victims at 10,000 then 11,300 in the days that followed.
But information gathering is chaotic on the ground. Even the UN cannot confirm these figures, a UN official in Libya tells us.
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), for its part, delivered 6,000 body bags to Libyan rescuers but it is impossible to know if they were all used, the international organization tells us.
The only certainty, one month after the devastating floods, is that a little more than 4,000 people have been buried, according to the authorities in eastern Libya. Figures confirmed by the WHO, the World Health Organization. But there are still many missing, at least 8,500 residents have not been found. The human toll could therefore amount to nearly 13,000 victims.
Among the survivors, 40,000 had to take refuge in schools or surrounding towns. 250,000 people need humanitarian assistance according to OCHA, the UN office for the coordination of humanitarian action.
The most horrible thing is hearing them tell us about the moment they left. They waited for the sun to rise. My cousin told me he wished he didn’t wake up, because they saw bodies upside down. Thousands of bodies that had nothing on them. Everything had exploded.
Report: one month later, a trauma that resonates throughout the country