TRIPOLI – A powerful storm and heavy floods
have killed 150 people in the
eastern Libyan city of Derna over the last two
days and the death toll is expected to rise to 250, the head of the Red
Crescent in Benghazi said on Monday, local media reported.
اضافة اعلان
Footage on social media showed people
stranded on the roofs of their vehicles as Storm Daniel hit Benghazi, Sousse,
Al Bayda, Al-Marj and Derna, a city on the Mediterranean some 250 km (150
miles) east of Benghazi.
"We recorded at least 150 deaths after
the collapse of buildings. We expect death toll to rise to 250. The situation
is very catastrophic," the Red Crescent's Kais Fhakeri told Reuters.
The toll in other areas was not immediately
clear.
"We were asleep, and when we woke up,
we found water besieging the house. We are inside and trying to get out,"
Derna resident Ahmed Mohamed told Reuters by phone on Monday.
The missing includes seven members of the
Libyan National Army (LNA), its spokesman, Ahmad Mismari, said. The LNA is led
by Khalifa Haftar which controls the eastern part of the divided country.
Heavy floods washed away vehicles, footage
broadcast by eastern Libya's Almostkbal TV showed. The channel also posted
pictures of a collapsed road between Sousse and Shahat, home to the
Greek-founded and UNESCO-listed archaeological site Cyrene.
Witnesses said the water level had reached
three meters (10 feet) in Derna.
Libya's eastern-based parliament declared
three days of mourning. Abdulhamid al-Dbeibah, prime minister of the interim
government in Tripoli, also declared three days of mourning in all the affected
cities, calling them "disaster areas".
Four major oil ports in Libya, Ras Lanuf,
Zueitina, Brega and Es Sidra, were closed from Saturday evening for three days,
two oil engineers told Reuters.
Search-and-rescue operations were ongoing,
witnesses said. Authorities declared a state of extreme emergency, closing
schools and stores and imposing a curfew.
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