Deadly floods swept through northeastern Libya over the weekend, with the top official in the region warning that the toll could exceed 2,000 dead as rescue teams searched for survivors.
The Libyan Red Crescent, a nonprofit aid group whose volunteers had helped evacuate residents, said late on Monday that more than 300 people had died in the floods in the port city of Derna in eastern Libya. And more than 5,000 to 6,000 were missing because of floods in the city, apparently caused by the collapse of dams above Derna, according to a spokesman for the Libyan National Army that controls eastern Libya said, according to The Associated Press.
Exact figures on the scale of fatalities were difficult because of ongoing search efforts on Monday, a spokesman for authorities in that region said on Monday evening.
Libya has been divided between an internationally recognized government based in Tripoli and a separately administered region in the east.
It was not immediately clear what the head of the divided country’s eastern region, Osama Hamad, or the military spokesman, Ahmed Mismari, were basing their numbers on. But the flooding was centered in the region under Mr. Hamad’s administration, with parts of it declared a disaster zone in the aftermath and rescuers struggling to gain access to the area to provide help.
The internationally recognized authority in western Libya, in Tripoli, did not put out fatality figures, but its leaders held an emergency meeting on Monday on the crisis and said they had sent ambulances, rescue convoys and doctors to the area. They declared three days of mourning for the victims of the flooding.
For years, Libya has been fractured between the two rival governments and prime ministers — and the militias they control.
Heavy rainfall over the weekend in the country’s northeast swelled waters past riverbanks and officials said the force of the floodwaters swept away hundreds of homes and washed away roads. Stranded residents posted accounts of being trapped inside homes and cars, according to footage on social media.
“Entire neighborhoods have been swept away by the sea, and entire neighborhoods have disappeared with their inhabitants,” Mr. Hamad said in a phone interview with the Libyan television channel al-Masar on Monday from Derna, among one of the worst-hit cities.
The flooding also ravaged other areas, including the cities of Al-Bayda and Shahhat, where the rising waters forced more evacuations. One medical center in Al-Bayda said it had been forced to move patients, and it shared footage of workers desperately to sweep floodwaters outside of submerged hallways.
Derna appeared to have suffered the worst. Local officials in the port city have declared the area a disaster zone, with large parts of the city having been submerged in water. Roads into the city have been cut off, the City Council confirmed on Monday on its Facebook page. It called for the opening of a maritime passageway to the coastal city and for urgent international intervention.
“The situation is catastrophic,” the Council said. “The city of Derna is pleading for help.”
Residents of the area described chaotic scenes.
“What has happened is a tragedy and a humanitarian catastrophe for us,” said Mohammed Jadallah, a Derna resident who woke up his three children and fled the city on Sunday night after water began seeping into his home from the intensifying rain. Since then, with communications down, he has been unable to reach his siblings and has been unable to return to Derna because of the collapsed roads.
“We don’t know where our families are, we don’t have homes, and we’ve heard that there are a significant number of casualties,” he said, adding that he had already seen photos of his home, which had been washed away. “We have become displaced.”
Many of the victims’ bodies in Derna had been scattered through the city by the flooding, said Mohammed Abulammousha, a spokesman for the Hamad administration’s interior ministry. In a phone interview on Monday evening, he said he had witnessed “horrifying scenes.”
He cited a shortage of rescue capabilities and difficulties getting to some of the affected areas. But he added that the authorities were trying to rescue survivors, provide them with food and evacuate them from the city’s devastated areas.
“We call on international organizations and countries to assist us in the catastrophe that has befallen the city,” he said.
Some foreign governments and aid groups offered to help. The U.S. embassy in Libya said on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, that they were in close contact with the United Nations and Libyan authorities to quickly bring assistance. An emergency team was being prepared to support local authorities and parties, said Georgette Gagnon, the U.N’s humanitarian coordinator.
The United Arab Emirates also said that it would send urgent relief and rescue teams to Libya, according to the Emirati state news agency.
The drenching rains were part of a weather front that had unleashed major flooding in Greece, Turkey and Bulgaria last week, sweeping away buildings and killing more than a dozen people before moving toward Libya.
