Libya’s emergency services on Wednesday tallied 2,300 deaths caused by the dam bursts in the eastern city of Derna following record rainfall that overflowed the two river reservoirs.
Media reports quoted a spokesperson for the interior ministry of Libya’s eastern-based government as saying “more than 5,200” people had died in Derna.
Tamer Ramadan of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies fears that the death toll will rise, saying Tuesday he received reports of 10,000 people missing after the broken dams released an enormous surge of water that tore through the Mediterranean coastal city, sweeping away buildings and the people inside them.
Derna, 300 kilometers east of Benghazi, is ringed by hills and bisected by what is normally a dry riverbed in summer, but which became a raging torrent of mud-brown water that also swept away several major bridges.
Derna was home to about 100,000 people, and many of its multi-story buildings on the banks of the riverbed collapsed, with people, their homes and cars vanishing in the raging waters.
Rescue teams from Turkey have arrived in eastern Libya, according to authorities. The United Nations and several countries offered to send aid, among them Algeria, Egypt, France, Italy, Qatar and Tunisia.
France is sending a field hospital and around 50 military and civilian personnel able to treat 500 people a day, Paris said on Tuesday.