World丨Rescue efforts underway in Libya

Bodies were washing ashore in eastern Libya on Wednesday, swelling the death toll from a storm that swept whole neighborhoods out to sea, with thousands already confirmed dead and many thousands more still missing.

▲A boy pulls a suitcase past debris in a flash-flood damaged area in Derna, eastern Libya, in this picture released on Tuesday. AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE

The floods damaged or destroyed many access roads to the coastal city of Derna. Bridges over river Derna that link the city's eastern and western parts have also collapsed, said the International Organization for Migration, or IOM. The destruction has hampered the arrival of international rescue teams and humanitarian assistance to tens of thousands of people whose homes were destroyed or damaged.

Bulldozers worked over the past two days to fix and clear roads to allow the delivery of humanitarian aid. Heavy equipment was urgently needed for the search and rescue operations. The city is 250 kilometers east of Benghazi, where international aid started to arrive on Tuesday.

Libya's neighbors, Egypt, Algeria and Tunisia, as well as Turkiye and the United Arab Emirates, have sent rescue teams and humanitarian aid.

Also, the EU said Wednesday its members Germany, Romania and Finland had dispatched assistance.

Ossama Ali, a spokesman for the Ambulance and Emergency Center in eastern Libya, told The Associated Press on Wednesday that at least 5,100 deaths were recorded in Derna, along with around 100 others elsewhere in eastern Libya.

More than 7,000 people were injured in the city, most receiving treatment in field hospitals that authorities and aid agencies set up.

The flooding caused significant infrastructure damage in the coastal city of Derna and displaced at least 30,000 people, the UN migration agency said.

Local emergency responders, including troops, government workers, volunteers and residents, continued digging through the rubble looking for the dead. They also used inflatable boats and helicopters to retrieve bodies from the water and inaccessible areas.

"This is a disaster in every sense of the word," a wailing survivor who lost 11 members of his family told a local television station as a group of rescuers tried to calm him. The television station did not identify the survivor.

Ahmed Abdalla, a survivor who joined the search and rescue effort, said they were putting bodies in the yard of a local hospital before taking them for burial in mass graves at the city's sole intact cemetery.

Four major oil ports in Libya have reopened after shutting down on Saturday because of the storm that swept the country, port agent Al Omran International Maritime Agencies said on Wednesday.

The eastern ports of Brega, Es Sidra and Ras Lanuf opened on Tuesday and the port of Zueitina opened on Wednesday morning, Al Omran said.

Country torn apart

The invasion of Libya by the US-led North Atlantic Treaty Organization has torn apart the country that could have found peaceful solutions to the problems, leaving behind chaos and vulnerability to natural disasters, observers have said.

The catastrophic event was triggered by a Mediterranean storm that made landfall in eastern Libya on Sunday, resulting in widespread flooding and causing extensive damage to infrastructure along its path.

Abdul-Hamed Dbeibah, the prime minister of Libya's Tripoli-based Government of National Unity, on Tuesday urged the country's political parties to unite to help deal with the aftermath of the floods.

Mohamed Masoud, head of the Information Office of the eastern-based House of Representatives, the parliament, told Xinhua that most of the victims were from Derna.

Meanwhile, Tamer Ramadan, Libyan envoy representing the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, told a UN meeting on Tuesday that he believed there were still at least 10,000 people unaccounted for in the flood-hit areas.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has expressed "heartfelt condolences" to the Libyan authorities and families of those who have perished as a result of the deadly storm, his spokesman said on Tuesday.